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ON LIFE AFTER DEATH 




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ON 

LIFE AFTER DEATH 

FROM THE GERMAN 
OF 
GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 



BY 

DR. HUGO WERNEKKE 

Head Master of Weimar Realgymnasium 



A New Edition Revised and Enlarged 



Cbicago 

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 

LONDON AGENTS 

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. 
1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

MAR 12 1906 

1 . Copyright Cntry 
CUSS Ct' he. No. 

I3<1 & & f 

' v COPY B. ' 



3ffa/ 



Copyright 1906 

by 

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 

CHICAGO 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027651 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF 

THE REVERED AUTHOR, 

who on his eightieth birthday kindly 

accepted the first english version of 

the present little book 

On Life After Death 
from 
The Translator. 



... El nacer 
Y el morir son parecidos." 

La vida es sueno: I. 678. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

FECHNER'S famous essay, Das Buch- 
lein vom Leben nach dem Tode, 
which in this present shape 1 hopes to 
be made welcome to the English-reading 
public, came out originally in 1835. But in 
the age of romanticism, strange to say, it 
seems to have met with little more favor 
than in the ensuing period of materialism, 
when Buchner and Moleschott proclaimed 
a creed attainable without much mental ef- 
fort. A second edition, therefore, slightly 
altered, 2 was not undertaken till 1866. A 

1 It is a revision of our first edition, published in 
1882 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 
London. While this new edition was in preparation, 
another translation came out in the United States, 
by Maria C Wjads worth (Boston 1905). 

2 The alterations, throughout in the shape of omis- 
sions, are slight in extent, but characteristic of the 
author's mental development. He thought it advisa- 
ble to suppress certain passages, in which his philo- 

7 



8 PREFACE. 



third edition, in 1887, bore witness, on the 
one hand, that the new generation had be- 
gun to appreciate the booklet, and on the 
other hand, that its author, with his mind 
constantly fixed on the highest problems of 
moral and natural philosophy, still upheld 
the views set forth in one of his earliest 
publications. A fourth and a fifth reprint 
came out, after his death, in 1900 and 1903. 
It was a long and laborious life, though 
outwardly uneventful, which closed on No- 
vember 1 8th, 1887. Gustav Theodor Fech- 
ner was born, on April 19th, 1801, at Gross- 
Sarchen, a small village in the Oberlausitz, 
which at present belongs to the Prussian 
province of Silesia, whereas in the begin- 
ning of the last century it was under the 
Elector of Saxony. Hence it was at the 
ancient Saxon university, in Leipzig, that 
Fechner went through his course of studies, 
and where in 1834 he was appointed pro- 

sophic imagination might be considered to have taken 
too daring a flight. They will be found, with a 
reference to their original place in his deductions, at 
the end of this translation. 



PREFACE. 9 

fessor of physics. His sphere of activity 
was not confined to- the delivering of public 
lectures. He wrote, and translated from 
the French, science textbooks, and conduct- 
ed several magazines of a scientific charac- 
ter. The observations preparatory to his 
publications on galvanism and electro-mag- 
netism proved injurious to his eyesight, so 
that for some time he was obliged to give 
up all writing and lecturing. It was, how- 
ever, so far restored as to enable him to la- 
bor for many successive years in the fields 
of scientific investigation and philosophical 
and met: physical speculation. 

His standard work Elemente der Psycho- 
physik was published in 1859 (with impor- 
tant additions issued in 1877 and 1882). 
Slowly, at least in the beginning, but stead- 
ily and very honorably, it has made its way 
among men of science, at home and abroad. 
Fechner's Law, the fundamental law of 
psychophysics (stating that sensation varies 
in the ratio of the logarithm of impression) 
has become a term of international cur- 
rency. 



IO PREFACE. 



" It will never be forgotten/' says 
Wundt, 3 " that Fechner was the first to in- 
troduce exact methods, exact principles of 
measurement and experimental observation 
for the investigation of psychic phenomena, 
and thereby to open the prospect of a psy- 
chological science, in the strict sense of the 
word. When Herbart had a similar aim in 
view, he failed to find the way towards it. 
The chief merit of Fechner's method is this : 
that it has nothing to apprehend from the 
vicissitudes of philosophical systems. Mod- 
ern psychology has indeed assumed a really 
scientific character, and may keep aloof 
from all metaphysical controversy." 

If among the divers branches of psychol- 
ogy, aesthetics seemed least of all suscepti- 
ble of scientific treatment, it was Fechner 
again, who- attempted, and successfully at- 
tempted, an Introduction to Esthetics 
{Vorschule der TEsthetik, 1876), based on 
experiment and analysis. He modestly 

8 Gustav Theodor Fechner. Rede zur Feier seines 
hundertjahrigen Geburtstags gehalten von "Wilhelm 
Wundt. Leipzig 1901. 



PREFACE. II 

speaks of it as a " rhapsodic " discussion of 
various questions, but he clearly shows the 
way to solve the proposed problems — not 
on the basis of a priori principles, by the 
descending process or the way " from 
above," as he likes to describe it, but by ob- 
servation and induction, by the ascending 
process, the way " from below." He dwells 
upon the connection of the problems on hand 
with the more general investigation of the 
causes of pleasure. Beginning with pleas- 
ing objects of the simplest description (geo- 
metrical figures, for instance), and proceed- 
ing to analyze works of art, he finds out 
experimentally what it is that makes things 
pleasant or unpleasant, and formulates the 
principles of aesthetic pleasure. 

The long 'and varied list of Fechner's 
publications, in the shape of detached es- 
says, pamphlets and greater works, opens 
with the writings of " Dr. Mises " — such as 
A Demonstration that the Moon is made of 
Iodine, A Panegyric of the Medical Art of 
the Present Time, Four Paradoxes* Stape- 
4 The Paradoxes dexterously proved fty Dr. Mises 



12 PREFACE. 

lia Mixta, 5 and at the first sight it may seem 
hard to realize the identity of Dr. Mises, 
with his sometimes exuberantly fantastic 
humor, and Professor Fechner, the scientist 
and philosopher. And yet the sympathetic 
reader will understand how the one could 
develop into the other. There is similarity 
of style between them, and there is, strange 
as it may sound, relationship of subject. 
The Anatomy of Angels, for instance, which 

are these, That the shadow is a living being; That 
space has four dimensions ; That witchcraft is a 
reality; That the world was made not by a creative 
but by a destructive principle. 

5 The whimsical choice of this title is thus face- 
tiously explained by the author : " I was anxious to 
follow the fashion with my little book, sending it out 
under the name of some flower. But finding that the 
recent publications were adorned with the names of 
almost all the children of Flora which I knew, I was 
rather at a loss, till a Stapelia mixta, placed outside 
my window, caught my eye, a flower of a somewhat 
sombre color, dotted with glaring bright specks, and 
exhaling an odor, that the carrion-flies will lay their 
eggs on it by mistake. As little as a Christian, I 
said to myself, will ever call his baby Judas Iscariot, 
as little can a fashionable author have called his book 
after that flower. And so my hesitation was re- 
moved." 



PREFACE. 13 



reads very like a fairy-tale, turns out to be 
a humorous prelude to the fundamental con- 
ception of the planet-world, on which the 
first part of his Zend-Avesta is based. 
Originally the Booklet on Life after Death, 
dedicated to two young ladies, the daugh- 
ters of Fechner's friend Grimmer, a Leipzig 
bookseller, also bore the name of Dr. Mises. 
Here, however, the author is quite grave. 
The subject of the second part of Zend- 
Avesta (which did not appear till 16 years 
afterwards) is here previously sketched, 
with a forcible eloquence and great warmth 
of feeling. The author confines himself to 
stating his ideas, the dogmatic tone is preva- 
lent, the reasoning by analogy, a peculiar 
modification of the inductive method, which 
is the characteristic feature of his later 
works, is less obvious here. 

Another little book of a preliminary char- 
acter, on the Summiim Bonum (Uber das 
hbchste Gut, 1846) briefly stating the ethi- 
cal principles more fully expounded in 
Zend-Avesta, was followed, in 1848, by an 
elaborate discussion of what Fechner terms 



14 PREFACE. 



" the Soul-Question " — the problem of the 
soul. In Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants, 
he upholds that the same reasons which 
cause us to assume the existence of a mind 
or soul 6 in the bodies of man and of ani- 
mals, viz. : the evident design in their bod- 
ily organization, the helpful interaction of 
their organs, the reaction upon, and adapta- 
tion to, outward conditions, must induce us 
to assume that there is a soul in plants as 
well. From the tenet that the organized 
beings inferior to man must have a soul, or 
rather do not consist of a body and soul, 
but are body and soul in one, like man him- 
self, he proceeded to the higher and grand- 
er conception, that the beings superior to 
man, the celestial bodies, must likewise have 
an inward life, underlying, or concomitant 
with, their outward life — that, in fact, the 
whole universe is alive, not a dead bulk, but 

6 It may be as well to state here that Fechner, with 
his skill in minute research and his mastery of lan- 
guage, has little taste for certain subtleties of termin- 
ology, so that in his writings, as in our translation, 
the terms mind, soul, spirit, are used with very little 
difference of meaning. 



PREFACE. 15 

an animated being, a wonderful organism 
of the sublimest order. This grand doc- 
trine was ingeniously and eloquently set 
forth in Zend-Avesta, or the Things of 
Heaven and the Hereafter {Zend-Avesta, 
oder uber die Dinge des Himmels und des 
Jenseits), published in 1851, in three vol- 
umes, of which the first and second contain 
his ideas on the relation of human life to 
divine life and the life of the universe, 
whereas the subject of the third is the rela- 
tion of our present life to the life to come. 
He sums up his ideas in the following para- 
graphs : 

Syllabus of the Theory of Heavenly Things. 
(Zend-Avesta, Chap. XX.) 

I. According to a quite justified, though not 
exactly current view, the earth — comprising in 
the term water, air, animals, plants, in short, 
everything that by the force of attraction is 
retained on it — represents, in the same way as 
the human body, a system based on the con- 
tinuity of substance and closely held together by 
mutual and purposeful interaction, made up of a 
variety of parts and subordinate systems, and 



1 6 PREFACE. 



going through, in never-ending evolution, a va- 
riety of periodical and cyclical motions, of which 
general system of parts and motions the human 
body constitutes an inferior system. 

2. Examining the various points of resem- 
blance as well as of difference between man 
and earth, we discover on the one hand an 
agreement between them in every point which 
in any theory of the relation between body and 
soul has been established as characteristic of 
a spiritual individuality connected with a ma- 
terial organism, whereas their undeniable differ- 
ences make it evident that the earth is an indi- 
viduality of higher and more independent life 
than man's lower and more restrained life. 

3. As our bodies belong to the greater and 
higher individual body of the earth, so our 
spirits belong to the greater and higher individ- 
ual spirit of the earth, which comprises all the 
spirits of earthly creatures, very much as the 
earth-body comprises their bodies. At the same 
time the earth-spirit is not a mere assembly of 
all the spirits of the earth, but a higher, individ- 
ually conscious union of them. Our own indi- 
viduality and independence, which are naturally 
but of a relative character, are not impaired but 
conditioned by this union. If any meaning is 
to be connected with the term in current use, 
when we speak of a " spirit of mankind," we must 
identify it with the spirit of the earth. 



PREFACE. 17 

4. Considering that the earth is one of the 
celestial bodies, and reasoning again from anal- 
ogy, we are led to view those bodies, the stars, 
as endowed with an individual spirit each, and 
thus forming a realm of another and higher 
order of beings, in which we may indeed discover 
such characteristics as we have reason to ascribe 
to beings of a higher order than ours. This 
view of ours coincides with the belief of many 
human races, which at all times, as long as 
they were in close contact with nature, looked 
upon the hosts of heaven as divine beings — 
and wherein our own popular belief in angels 
has its roots. 

5. As all the stars, considered materially, be- 
long to the material universe, so all the spirits 
of stars belong to the spirit of the universe, 
i. e., the divine spirit. At the same time their 
own individuality and independence is as little 
impaired by this circumstance as our own spirits 
are by their connection with the earth-spirit: 
it is their common link, their highest conscious 
union. 

6. The divine spirit is one, omniscient and truly 
all-conscious, i. e., holding all the consciousness 
of the universe and thus comprising each indi- 
vidual consciousness of his creatures in a higher 
and the highest connection. 

7. As the earth, far from separating our bodies 
from the universe, connects and incorporates us 



l8 PREFACE. 



with the universe, so the spirit of the earth, far 
from separating our spirits from the divine spirit, 
forms a higher individual connection of every 
earthly spirit with the spirit of the universe. 
This circumstance does not abolish the blessed 
fact that we have in Christ the highest mediator 
between God and man. 

Syllabus of the Theory of the Hereafter. 
(Zend-Avesta, Chap. XXXI.) 

i. When a man dies, his spirit will not be 
absorbed in the greater and higher spirit of 
which it was born to an individual existence; 
on the contrary, his relation to that spirit will 
become clear and conscious, and his whole spirit- 
ual property will appear in a higher light. By 
that higher spirit the earth-spirit as well as 
the divine spirit may be understood, as it is the 
spirit of the earth that connects us with God. 

2. Our present life and our future life may 
aptly be compared to a life of perceptions and 
a life of reminiscences. Or we may say that the 
higher spirit to whom we belong will transfer 
us in death from his lower life, of perceptions, 
to his higher life, of reminiscences. As now we 
share his perception-life, without losing our in- 
dividuality and relative independence, we shall 
share, in a like manner, his reminiscence-life. 

3. The relation between the spirits of that 



PREFACE. 19 



higher stage and those of our lower stage, which 
are connected into one spiritual realm, finds its 
analogy in the connection of our own spheres 
of reminiscences and perceptions. As our per- 
ceptions derive a higher significance from our 
reminiscences, and as our reminiscences are 
constantly influenced by our perceptions, which 
come to associate themselves with them, so do 
the spirits of the higher stage give a higher sig- 
nificance to our spiritual life and are in their 
turn influenced by ours ; though at the same time 
they live their own higher and freer life, in their 
relations to each other and to the higher spirit. 

4. As our reminiscences require a less sharply 
defined place in our brain than our perceptions, 
so are the spirits of the higher stage less closely 
tied to earthly substance, though they, like our 
reminiscences, cannot entirely do without it. 
Now the material foundation of our reminis- 
cences, whatever it may be, grows from the ma- 
terial of our perceptions (the images of outward 
objects, for instance, produce effects in our brain, 
with which, when perception has ceased, rem- 
iniscence will be connected), so will the material 
existence connected with the spiritual life in the 
hereafter grow from our present existence. 

5. Our future spheres of existence, though all 
incorporated in the same great body, the earth, 
will not disturb, confuse or efface each other. 
Even here our spheres of existence necessarily 



20 PREFACE. 

cross and intersect each other, as the means of 
our mutual intercourse, which in the hereafter 
will only increase in intimacy, variety and con- 
sciousness ; and in our brain the material changes 
connected with our reminiscences cross and in- 
tersect each other, leaving them nevertheless 
undisturbed and unefYaced. 

6. As in our present life the body which at 
any period is the vehicle of our mind, has grown 
from the body which was its vehicle in a former 
period, so in our future life the material vehicle 
of our spiritual existence must have grown, to 
preserve our individuality, from the vehicle of our 
present spiritual existence. This condition is 
indeed realized in our individual sphere of ac- 
tions, in the totality of which everything is 
stored up that during our present life has pro- 
duced any effect in our body. 

7. The extinction of o~r present life seems to 
be the condition for the transition of conscious- 
ness from its present sphere to the continuation 
of it. A similar antagonism is observable in the 
various spheres of our consciousness, as long as 
it is connected with, and therefore confined by, 
our narrower body. 

8. The moral side of our view is this, that 
it explains how every man produces the conditions 
of a blessed or unblessed existence hereafter, in 
the consequences of his inward and outward acts 
during his present existence. The man who in 



PREFACE. 21 

this life tried to understand the divine order of 
things and to act in accordance with it, doing 
what is good, within himself and in the world, 
will have the final salutary effects of it as a 
reward; the man whose thoughts and actions 
have been bad, who wrought evil in this world, 
will have to bear the consequences of it as a 
punishment — which consequences will increase 
on him till he turn from his evil way. 

9. Our views are not in contradiction w T ith 
the teachings of Christianity, from which after 
all they deviate only in some less essential points. 
Pointing out the real meaning of certain teach- 
ings, which are sometimes taken in a more or less 
figurative or symbolical sense, they may serve to 
fortify Christian conviction and promote Chris- 
tian life* 

The Author's Creed. 
(Zend-Avesta, Chap. XXXII.) 

1. I believe in one God, eternal, infinite, om- 
nipresent, all-mighty, all-knowing, all-loving, all- 
just, all-merciful, through whom comes and goes 
and has its being whatever there comes and goes 
and is, who lives and moves and has his being in 
everything as everything in him; who knows 
everything that is known and can be known; who 
loves all his creatures in one as he loves himself; 
who does will what is good and does not will 



22 PREFACE. 



what is evil; who in the course of time directs 
everything to its own good end; who is merciful 
even to the wicked, so as to make his very pun- 
ishment the means of his improvement and final 
salvation. 

2. I believe that God has bestowed certain 
parts or sides of his spiritual essence on individ- 
ual creatures, this earth being one of them, filled 
with its own spirit, as a portion of the divine 
essence, which again, in an individual manner, 
fills all the individual creatures of the earth, so 
that all of us, human beings, animals and plants, 
are children of God from and in and through 
this spirit, though man alone enjoys the privilege, 
which involves a duty, of becoming conscious of 
his eternal father's will and of his own fellow- 
ship in a higher spiritual community. 

3. I believe that Christ, son of God from and 
in and through the spirit that fills the earth as 
a portion of the divine essence, is not only one 
of us, but above us, as we are destined through 
his mediatorship to become children of God and 
attain a higher spiritual union than through our 
mere natural birth. 

4. I believe that there is nothing either un- 
natural or supernatural in God's universal order 
and dispensation, though there may result un- 
common and unexampled effects from uncommon 
and unexampled causes, so that in the whole of 
Christ's life and work there was nothing un- 



PREFACE. 23 

natural or supernatural, only that he was the 
cause, such as never had been nor ever will be 
again, of effects that never had been but will 
remain and go on growing forever. 

5. I believe, that the one right way to the 
salvation of mankind is by true love of God and 
of one's neighbor, truly practised as it has been 
commanded by Christ, and that cherishing this 
love and practising it is the one thing whereby in 
a higher sense we shall be made of one spirit. 

6. I believe that the teaching and community 
of Christ will not decrease, but increase, so that 
one day every human being shall belong to it; 
even what is not given in this life, shall be given 
herafter. 

7. I believe that the community or church of 
Christ is the body that is forever filled with his 
spirit, and that the teaching of Christ, duly 
preached, read, interpreted, received and acted 
upon, with baptism and eucharist duly admin- 
istered and received, are the principal means of 
keeping Christ's spirit alive in his community 
or church and of incorporating, strengthening 
and preserving its members. 

8. I believe in a resurrection and an eternal 
life of man, as a consequence and continuation 
of his present life, whereof we have an example 
in Christ, our present body and life being only a 
small seedcorn of a freer and more refined body 
and life, which shall be ours, when our spirit is 



24 PREFACE. 



to live in a house not made by hands, which will 
last forever, in heaven, where everything shall 
be made known that now is hidden from us, and 
where we shall see clearly, what now we see in 
part, as in a glass, darkly, and where those that 
are here spiritually united in and through Christ, 
shall see him and each other face to face. I 
believe that this fleeting present life is a prepara- 
tory stage to eternal life, and that everyone in 
his good or evil intentions, his good or evil 
deeds, produces the conditions of his future life, 
that his works shall follow him and that he will 
reap what he has sown, 

9. I believe that the purport of the divine com- 
mandments is not to spoil man's pleasure and 
happiness, but to regulate and direct his will and 
his doings to the purpose of promoting the 
greatest possible happiness of them all. I believe 
that to will and do according to this purpose is 
the duty of man, and that thereby he will be in 
accordance with God's commandments, even in 
cases when there is no express commandment. 

10. I believe that the consequences of evil 
actions are such that in the course of time they 
will bring about their own punishment, and 
those of good actions, finally to bring about their 
own reward. I believe that the consequences of 
this life will extend to the hereafter, where such 
justice will be fully administered as was only 
begun or postponed here. I believe that the 



PREFACE. 25 



punishment of the wicked and the reward of the 
good, when longer postponed, will finally come 
on the more decidedly, and will continue to in- 
crease till the bad man shall have been compelled 
to mend his way, and till the good man shall 
have given himself up completely to the divine 
mercy. I believe that the free will of man may 
alter the way towards that end, but not the end 
itself. I believe that this is not the working of 
a lifeless order of things, but that this order is 
due to the indwelling of the divine spirit 

Fechner's next work, Professor Schleiden 
und der Mond (1856) was more than an 
apology of his Nanna; it was a new at- 
tempt, repeated in the books On the Soul- 
Question (1861) and The Three Motives 
and Arguments of Belief (Die drei Motive 
und Griinde des Glaubens, 1863), to rouse 
the world from its materialistic slumber — 
a task which he was well aware would re- 
quire " a good deal of breath/' When Dar- 
win's views began to attract universal atten- 
tion, Fechner, with a wonderful sagacity 
and a comprehensiveness of mind certainly 
not frequent in a man of his age, assimilated 
them into his own system, giving them a 



26 PREFACE. 



new foundation, and at the same time de- 
riving from them a new support to his own 
theories. This was done in his treatise — 
Some Ideas on the Creation and Evolution 
of Organisms (Einige Ideen zur Schop- 
fungs, und Entzmckelungsgeschichte der 
Organismen — 1 873 ) . In The Daylight- 
View versus the Night-View {Die Tagesan- 
sicht gegeniiber der Nachtansicht — 1879) 
he gave a new exposition and apology of 
his metaphysical system, the subject being 
essentially the same as in Zend-Avesta, re- 
arranged and condensed. It appears from 
this and from some minor publications of 
his latter years, that to the end of his life 
Fechner's efforts lay invariably in the same 
direction, attempting to bring about a rec- 
onciliation, so much needed in our days, of 
science and religion, by looking not at one 
side of the universe only, but diligently ex- 
amining it in its two aspects, the material 
and the spiritual. The scientist still seems 
little inclined to approach the latter; his 
habits of thought will not permit him to en- 
ter upon such discussions. On the other 



PREFACE. 27 



hand, it seems only natural, as Wundt says, 
that " the adherents of modern mysticism 
should have claimed Fechner as one of their 
own." Baron Reichenbach, the discoverer 
of Od, engaged his interest, " almost by vio- 
lence/' till Fechner yielded to attend some 
of his experiments. In 1877, when Henry 
Slade was in Germany, Fechner received 
many an invitation to join spiritistic seances. 
Professor Zollner was his friend, and he 
could not refuse to be present, with W. 
Weber, the physicist, and Scheibner, the 
mathematician, during the experiments with 
Slade, which Zollner afterwards described 
in such an enthusiastic tone of conviction 
that most of his previous admirers began to 
doubt of his sanity of mind. Fechner 
speaks of them with great reserve. He does 
not undertake to deny from the outset the 
possibility of the so-called spiritistic phe- 
nomena, but he yields with reluctance to the 
empirical reasons for acknowledging their 
reality. His daylight-view can exist with 
or without spiritism, but he would prefer to 
do without it. " For though the two views 



28 PREFACE. 

coincide in some material points, so that our 
view may find and to some degree does find 
a support in spiritism, the character of its 
abnormal phenomena is inconvenient and 
prejudicial to the quiet progress of reason- 
ing/' At the same time he confesses " that, 
to be insensible to the amount and weight 
of evidence in favor of spiritistic phenom- 
ena, would be equivalent to contempt of 
experimental science. If spiritism be prepos- 
terous, the means commonly adopted to re- 
fute it are still more preposterous. On oth- 
er occasions inferences are drawn from 
successful experiments, neglecting those that 
were unsuccessful; in the case of spiritism, 
however, its adversaries draw their infer- 
ences entirely from unsuccessful experi- 
ments, rejecting those that were successful. 
On other occasions the investigator of a new 
field of experience makes it his object to 
find out the conditions for successful ex- 
periment ; in the present case the conditions 
are all made a priori. If an experiment 
made in the dark or with insufficient light 
be successful, it counts for nothing, because 



PREFACE. 29 



the result was not obtained by daylight; 
but if it is successful under more favorable 
conditions, by daylight, it counts again for 
nothing, owing to the nature of the result." 
Fechner makes this remark, as he declares, 
" not from sympathy with spiritism, but 
from a sense of justice due to the subject 
and the persons ; for even though one should 
like to get rid of spiritism at any expense, it 
ought not to be done at the expense of 
truth." 

The considerate way in which Fechner, 
with a truly philosophical attitude, expresses 
his opinion in this case, and which in fact 
never seems to leave him in his researches, 
is certainly apt to secure to his views a more 
than transitory appreciation. 

H. W. 
Weimar, 1905, 
On Fechner f s Birthday. 



M' 



CHAPTER I. 

"AN lives on earth not once, but three 
times : the first stage of his life is 
continual sleep ; the second, sleeping 
and waking by turns ; the third, waking for 
ever. 

In the first stage man lives in the dark, 
alone ; in the second, he lives associated with, 
yet separated from, his fellow-men, in a light 
reflected from the surface of things; in the 
third, his life, interwoven with the life of 
other spirits, is a higher life in the Highest 
of spirits, with the power of looking to the 
bottom of finite things. 

In the first stage his body develops itself 
from its germ, working out organs for the 
second; in the second stage his mind de- 
velops itself from its germ, working out 
organs for the third ; in the third the divine 
germ develops itself, which lies hidden in 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 3 1 

every human mind, to direct him, through 
instinct, through feeling and believing, to the 
world beyond, which seems so dark at pres- 
ent, but shall be light as day hereafter. 

The act of leaving the first stage for the 
second we call Birth; that of leaving the 
second for the third, Death. Our way from 
the second to the third is not darker than our 
way from the first to the second: one way 
leads us forth to see the world outwardly; 
the other, to see it inwardly. 

The infant, in the first stage, is blind and 
deaf to all the light and all the music of the 
second stage, and having to leave its moth- 
er's womb is hard and painful, and at a cer- 
tain moment of its birth the dissolution of its 
former life must be like death to it, before it 
wakens to its new existence. In the same 
way we, in our present life, with all our con- 
sciousness bound up within this narrow 
body, know nothing of the light, the music, 
the freedom, and the glory of the life to 
come, and often feel inclined to look upon 
the dark and narrow passage which leads 
towards it, as a little lane with " no thorough- 



32 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

fare" to it. Whereas death is merely a 
second birth into a happier life, when the 
spirit, breaking through its narrow hull, 
leaves it to decay and vanish, like the in- 
fant's hull in its first birth. And then all 
those things which we, with our present 
senses, can only know from the outside, or, 
as it were, from a distance, will be pene- 
trated into, and thoroughly known, by us. 
Then, instead of passing by hills and mead- 
ows, instead of seeing around us all the 
beauties of spring, and grieving that we 
cannot really take them in, as they are mere- 
ly external : our spirits shall enter into those 
hills and meadows, to feel and enjoy with 
them their strength and their pleasure in 
growing; instead of exerting ourselves to 
produce, by means of words or gestures, 
certain ideas in the minds of our fellow- 
men, w r e shall be enabled to elevate and 
influence their thoughts, by an immediate 
intercourse of spirits, which are no longer 
separated, but rather brought together, by 
their bodies ; instead of being visible in our 
bodily shape to the eyes of the friends we 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 33 

left behind, we shall dwell in their inmost 
souls, a part of them, thinking and acting 
in them and through them. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE infant, when in its mother's womb, 
has merely a body-spirit — the 
Formative Principle. Its actions are 
limited to growing, to producing and devel- 
oping its several limbs and organs. It does 
not feel them as its own property, it does 
not use them, nor is it able to use them. A 
beautiful eye, a beautiful mouth are merely 
beautiful objects to the infant; it has pro- 
duced them: without being aware that one 
day they shall be useful parts of its own 
self. They are made for a world to come 
whereof it knows nothing, fashioned 
through some mysterious impulse, the origin 
of which must be traced back to the organi- 
zation of its mother. 1 As soon, however, 

1 For the physiologist I would express it more dis- 
tinctly, thus. The formative principle of the infant 
lies, before its birth, not in those parts which are to 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 35 

as the infant, matured for the second stage 
of life, leaves its primary organs behind, it 
grows self-conscious, feels itself an inde- 
pendent unity of all its self-crealed organs: 
the eye, the ear, the mouth henceforth are 
its own ; and having produced them through 
some innate impulse, unconsciously, it now 
learns to use them, rejoicing in its strength; 
a world of light, of colors, sounds, odors, 
tastes, reveals itself through the organs pro- 
duced for those purposes. 

Now, the relation of the first stage of life 
to the second will recur, in a climax, in the 
relation of the second stage to the third. 
In a way similar to the one just alluded to, 
all our volitions and actions in this world 
are intended to produce an organism, which 
in the world to come we shall perceive and 
use as our own new Self. All the mental 
influences, all the results due to the actions 

continue living after its birth, but rather in those 
which, in birth, must be left behind and decay, as the 
body of man decays in death (placenta cum funiculo 
umbilicali, velamentis ovi, eorumque liquoribus) ; 
thus the human being, born into the world, grows 
out of the infant's activity, as a continuation of it. 



36 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

of a person in his lifetime, which spread all 
over mankind and all over the earth, are, 
even at present, bound up together by a 
mysterious, invisible bond, thus forming a 
person's spiritual organs, fashioned during 
his life and combined into a spiritual body, 
an organism of continually active powers 
and effects, of which, though indissolubly 
connected with his present existence, he has 
at present no consciousness. 

In the moment of death, however, when 
man has to part with those organs in which 
his powers of acting lay, he will, all at once, 
become conscious of all the ideas and effects 
which, produced by his manifold actions in 
life, will continue living and working in this 
world, and will form, as an organic off- 
spring of an individual stem, an organic in- 
dividuality which only then becomes alive, 
self-conscious, self -active, ready to act 
through the human and natural world, of 
its own will and power. 

Whatever a person contributes, in his life, 
towards creating, transforming, or preserv- 
ing the ideas pervading the human and nat- 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 37 

ural world, is his own imperishable portion, 
able to act for itself in the third stage of 
life, though the body to which, during the 
second stage, it was inherent, be long since 
decayed. The thoughts and actions of so 
many millions that are gone, are not gone 
with them, neither shall they be obliterated 
by the thoughts and actions of the many mil- 
lions that are to come after them; in them 
and with them they shall grow, and act, and 
impel them towards one great aim unseen 
by themselves. 

We are inclined to look upon this ideal 
continuation of our lives as a mere abstrac- 
tion, and to consider the continued influence 
w r hich the spirits of the dead exercise on the 
minds of the living as an idle fantasy. So it 
seems to us, because we lack the appropriate 
senses wherewith to perceive the spirits of 
the third stage, in their real existence, per- 
vading the depths of the Universe : we only 
perceive the ties which unite their existence 
with our own, viz. : those very ideas which 
they left behind for us to share with them. 
The circle of waves which a falling stone 



38 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

produces on a surface of water calls forth 
other circles round every rock rising above 
the surface within its reach; for all that it 
remains one continual circle, producing and 
encircling all the rest, whereas the rocks 
perceive it, so to speak, only in part, as a 
fragment. We are such rocks ourselves, 
unconscious of the encircling waves, though, 
unlike those fixed objects, we produce, every 
one of us, a continual circle of actions all 
around us, encircling and crossing those 
produced by our fellow-men. 

In fact, every person, in his lifetime, takes 
hold of, and grows into the minds of others, 
by his words and works, spoken, written, or 
acted. 

While Goethe was still alive, thousands of 
contemporaries bore within them some 
sparks from the light of his genius, which 
afterwards kindled up into new light. While 
Napoleon was still alive, his powerful gen- 
ius exercised its influence on the whole gen- 
eration almost; and when the one and the 
other died, the germs which had fallen into 
other minds, did not die with them, they 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 39 

grew, and developed themselves, constituting 
in their total an individual being, as their 
origin had been from an individual. And 
these new individual beings we must assume 
to be provided, though in a manner incom- 
prehensible to us, with self-consciousness, 
as well in their present state as they were 
before. Goethe, Schiller, Napoleon, Luther, 
are still alive among us, self-conscious in- 
dividuals thinking and acting with us, in 
a higher state of development now, no long- 
er bound up within a narrow body, but per- 
vading the world which they in their life- 
time instructed, edified, delighted, ruled, 
and producing effects even far surpassing 
those of which we are generally aware. 

The most striking instance of a great 
spirit living and working on through the 
ages we see in Christ. You must not think 
it an empty saying, that He liveth in those 
who believe in Him. Every true Christian 
carries Him within him, not in a symbolical 
meaning, but in life and reality; every one 
that thinks and acts according to His mind 
is a partaker in Him; for it is the spirit of 



40 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

Christ that causes in him such thinking and 
acting. He is diffused through all the mem- 
bers of His body, the Church, and they are 
all united through His spirit, like apples 
clinging to a tree, or branches attached to a 
vine : " For as the body is one, and hath 
many members, and all the members of that 
one body, being many, are one body : so also 
is Christ." (i Cor. xii. 12.) 

And like those great and this Greatest of 
spirits, every true worker shall waken in 
the world to come with an individuality, an 
organism of his own making, comprising 
thousands of effects and productions, filling 
a narrower or wider sphere, endowed with 
more or less power of growth and develop- 
ment, even as their spirits in this life moved 
more or less actively in their spheres of la- 
bor. The man that has been grovelling on 
the ground, employing his mental faculties 
only in moving, feeding, pampering his 
body, will become a very insignificant being 
hereafter. The richest will then be the 
poorest, if he has only used his money that 
he may not have to use his powers, and the 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 4 1 

poorest may turn out the richest, if he has 
used his powers to do his duty in this world. 
For whatever a man uses and puts out at 
present will be his own hereafter; but the 
pound that was kept and laid up in a napkin 
will be taken away entirely. 

The mysteriousness of our present inward 
life, the thirst after truth, which sometimes 
is of but little avail here below, the desire of 
every honest mind to work for the good of 
posterity, the sense of regret and trouble of 
mind caused by the consciousness of a wick- 
ed deed, even though unaccompanied by 
present disadvantages, all such phenomena 
arise from a dim presentiment of what our 
fate will be hereafter, when we shall reap 
the fruit of our slightest and most secret 
acts. 

Behold in this the wonderful justice of the 
Universe, leaving it to every being to pre- 
pare for himself the conditions of his future 
existence. There are no outward rewards 
and punishments for our actions, there is no 
heaven or hell — in the popular meaning of 
the word, with Christians, Jews, and Gen- 



42 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 



tiles — for the spirits of the dead to ascend 
or descend to, by a leap as it were; but 
there is no dead stop either, no absorption 
of the soul into the universe: the spirit of 
man has to go through his great climacteric 
disease, death; after which his development 
will continue, in and for a higher life on 
this earth of ours. The foundations of that 
higher development, in accordance with the 
laws of creation, must be sought for on a 
lower stage ; and according as a man, in this 
life, has been good or bad, has acted nobly 
or meanly, worked hard or neglected his 
work, he will find, in after-life, an organism 
of his own, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful 
or hateful, strong or weak; his self-chosen 
way of acting in this world will determine 
his relation to other spirits, his faculties and 
talents* his whole destiny during his devel- 
opment in that other world. 

" Let us then be up and doing ! " For he 
who walks at a slow pace here will be lame 
there; he who opens not his eyes here will 
be weak-sighted there; who practises deceit 
and wickedness will feel at variance with all 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 43 

the good and faithful spirits, and that feel- 
ing will be so painful in him as to impel him 
even in the other world, to amend the evil he 
did in this world; nor will he find rest and 
peace until his least and last, offence be re- 
pented and atoned for. When other spirits 
rest in peace with God, partaking of His 
thoughts, the wicked ones will go about rest- 
less, through the sorrows and changes of 
earthly life, and their spiritual disorder will 
infect other men with error and supersti- 
tion, with folly and vice; and while they, 
in the third world, lag behind on the way 
towards perfection, they will keep back 
those in whom they live, on their way from 
the second world to the third. 

Hence, meanness, wickedness, untruth, 
may hold their sway for a time against gen- 
erosity, honesty, godliness; but in the end 
they will be overcome by the increasing 
power of the good, they will be brought to 
nought through their own deeds, by the in- 
creasing evil consequent thereon, and noth- 
ing shall remain in any man's spirit that is 
false and vile and impure; only what is true, 



44 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

good, and beautiful, is to be our eternal, im- 
perishable portion, of which if there be but 
a mustard-seed in any of us (and there can 
be no human being utterly destitute of it), 
all dross and chaff which are yet around it 
will be consumed in the purging fire of our 
third life, a fire of torment for the wicked 
only — and in the end, be it ever so late, it 
will grow up into a noble tree. 

And you, too, rejoice, whose spirit is be- 
ing tried and refined here below by grief 
and suffering. You are only learning to be 
patient and persevering in removing every 
obstacle which would hinder your progress, 
and on being born into a higher life will 
find yourself the better enabled to make up 
for all it has been your lot on earth to leave 
undone. 



CHAPTER III. 

MAN uses many means to obtain one 
end, God makes one means serve 
many ends. 

The plant thinks it is here merely for its 
own sake, intended to grow, to toss in the 
wind, to drink in light and air, to prepare 
colors and odors as an ornament for it- 
self, to play with bees and butterflies. And 
it is here for itself, no doubt, but for the 
earth as well, a tiny organ of the earth for 
light, air, and water, to meet there and work 
together for the benefit of the whole ter- 
restrial system ; it is intended to breathe for 
the earth, to make a verdant garment for 
the earth, to prepare food, raiment, and fuel, 
for man and beast, 

Man thinks he is here merely for his own 
sake, intended to enjoy himself, to toil and 
labor for his growth in body and mind. 



46 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

And he is here for himself, no doubt; but 
his body is a dwelling-place for higher spir- 
its as well, to enter into, to commune and 
work together there, and thus to direct his 
mind to think and feel in various ways, and 
help him to be fit for the life to come. 

Man's mind is therefoi-e, simultaneously, 
his own property, and the property of those 
higher spirits; and whatever comes to pass 
in it, equally belongs to both sides, only in a 
different sense and manner. 




Thus, in our diagram, the many-colored 
star in the middle stands for itself, an inde- 
pendent individual figure, whose several 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 47 

rays shoot from, and are kept together by a 
common centre; and again that same star 
appears to be formed by the six single-col- 
ored circles, each of which is again an in- 
dependent individual figure, so that every 
ray belongs to the central star as well as to 
the intersecting circles. Behold in this not 
a likeness, but a symbol, of the human soul. 
We often wonder whence such a thought 
came into our minds. Some longing, or 
some melancholy, or happy mood will come 
over us we know not how or why. An in- 
ward voice persuades us to act, or exhorts 
us to forbear acting, though all the time we 
are not conscious of any motive of our own 
tending one way or other. This is the influ- 
ence of spirits entering into us, thinking and 
acting in us from centres different from our 
own. Such influence is still more striking 
in certain abnormal conditions of the mind 
— in clairvoyance or mental disorder — 
when the relation of mutual dependence has 
been decided in their favor, making us en- 
tirely passive under their influence, without 
any reaction on our own part. As long, 



48 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

however, as our mind is awake and healthy 
it cannot become a mere plaything, without 
a will of its own, of the spirits that have 
grown into it and become a living part of it. 
For such a healthy human mind is an invis- 
ible life-centre of spiritual attraction, a con- 
necting link for divers spirits, who are thus 
enabled to hold communion with each other, 
and to engender thoughts within us. They 
do not, however, create the mind, which is 
the inborn property of each individual per- 
son, with free-will, self-determination, self- 
consciousness, reasoning power, and all oth- 
er mental faculties comprised therein. At 
the time of our birth, it is true, all these 
faculties are folded up as in a germ, looking 
forward to being developed into an organ- 
ism of individual life and reality. Now, 
upon our entering this life those spirits draw 
near on all sides, trying to make use of our 
faculties for themselves, in order to increase 
their own sphere of activity, in a certain 
direction, and if they succeed in doing so, a 
new impulse in that same direction is given 
to our own mind in its development. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 49 

Those ingrown spirits, in their turn, are 
subject, though in a different way, to the 
influence of the human will. They influence 
and direct a man's mind, they also receive 
new impressions from the store of his spir- 
itual life. In a mind harmoniously devel- 
oped, none of these influences has the mas- 
tery over the others. For every concomitant 
spirit shares only a certain part of his own 
self with one individual person; hence the 
will of that person can exercise only a lim- 
ited influence on him whose sphere lies for 
the greater part without him; and as every 
human mind forms a rallying-point for 
many spirits, it can only be liable to a lim- 
ited influence from each of them. If a man, 
however, of his own choice would submit 
entirely to be guided by them, he would lose 
his control over their influences. 

There are spirits opposed to each other, 
so that their presence in the same human 
mind is incompatible; therefore the good 
and the evil spirits, the true and the false, 
dispute with each other the possession of our 
souls. The inward strife which so fre- 



50 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

quently we experience is just such a strug- 
gle of spirits trying to take possession of 
our will, our reason, in short, our whole in- 
ward life. As a person feels the agreement 
of the spirits within him, in peace, quiet, 
and harmony of his own self, he also feels 
their strife, in inward trouble, confusion, 
doubt and despondency. But man need not 
become an inert and restless prey for the 
stronger spirits in that combat; he stands, 
with his own active powers, in the midst 
of the contending elements each of which 
tries to draw him to itself; he may, in such 
strife, side with and help what party he 
chooses, and may thus decide the victory 
even in favor of the weaker side, adding 
his own strength to that of the spirit against 
the stronger ones. Thus his individuality, 
his own self, will remain unendangered as 
long as he preserves his inborn strength and 
freedom, nor tires of using them. If, nev- 
ertheless, he is led on by evil spirits, it is 
from the difficulty he may find in using his 
own inward strength; and so, to become 
bad, it is enough to be careless and lazy. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 5 1 

The better a man's character is, the more 
easy it will be for him to become still bet- 
ter ; and the worse he is, the more easily he 
will be utterly ruined. For a good man has 
received many good spirits within himself, 
who, uniting their powers with his, will save 
him some effort in getting rid of the evil 
spirits that have remained in him or ap^ 
proach him. Therefore, doing good does 
not weary a good man ; he has his good spir- 
its to help him, whereas a wicked man, to 
follow any good intentions he may have 
formed, must first overcome, by his own 
efforts, the evil spirits that resist his inten- 
tions. 

Besides, kindred spirits will find, and as- 
sociate with, each other, fleeing from con- 
trary ones, if not forced to stay. The good 
spirits within us call other good spirits 
around us, and the evil spirits within us 
attract the evil ones. Pure spirits rejoice to 
come and live in a pure mind, but outward 
evil takes hold of the evil within us. If 
good spirits in increasing numbers take their 
abode in our soul, the last devil that had 



52 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

lingered there will soon flee away, they are 
no fit company for him; and thus the soul 
of the good man becomes a pure heavenly 
dwelling for blessed spirits, abiding there in 
sweet company. But even good spirits when 
they see the impossibility of reclaiming a 
soul from the predominant evil ones, will 
desert it, and so it becomes a hell, a place 
full of the torment of the damned. For the 
pangs of conscience, and the trouble and 
restlessness in the minds of the wicked are 
torments not only felt by themselves, but by 
the evil spirits within them as well, even 
with more intensity. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE higher spirits, living as they are 
not in an individual man, but each 
living and acting in many, are spir- 
itual bonds between those persons, uniting 
them all in the same belief, the same truth, 
the same moral or political tendency. All 
the persons who have any spiritual fellow- 
ship between them, belong to the body of 
one spirit, and as co-ordinate members of it, 
work out the ideas which they have received 
from that spirit. Sometimes an idea lives 
at one time in a whole nation, a great num- 
ber of people are moved to one great com- 
mon enterprise. There is a mighty spirit 
coming over them all, penetrating them all. 
Such universal influences, however, are not 
only brought about by the spirits of the 
dead ; also numberless new-born ideas of the 
living influence those living around them; 



54 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

but all the ideas which a living person sends 
forth into the world are also elements and 
members of his future spiritual organism. 

Now, wherever two kindred spirits meet 
on earth, growing into one through their 
common qualities, and influencing and en- 
riching one another through their different 
qualities, the communities, nations, or gen- 
erations, to which they formerly belonged 
individually, enter into spiritual communion 
as well, increasing thereby the mental stores 
and powers of each other. Thus the devel- 
opment of spiritual life in the third stage is 
closely connected with the development and 
progress of mankind. The gradual forma- 
tion and growth of states, the progress of 
science and art, of commerce and trade, the 
development of all these spheres into larger 
and larger bodies harmoniously organized, 
is the consequence of numberless spirits liv- 
ing and moving among men and growing 
together into greater spiritual organisms. 

How could it be possible for all those im- 
portant spheres of life to take shape on great 
immutable principles, if they were to rely 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH 55 

on the confused selfish actions of individuals 
too short-sighted to see from the centre to 
the circumference, or from the circumfer- 
ence to the centre? How could it be pos- 
sible, were not this activity influenced by 
higher spirits, who see clearly through the 
whole system, and, crowding round the 
common divine centre, and uniting their 
divine elements, direct men, between them, 
towards higher aims? 

But as there is a harmony of spirits kind- 
ly meeting and helping each other, so is 
there also a conflict of spirits, in which all 
earthly and finite concerns must in the end 
destroy one another, leaving the things eter- 
nal to survive in their purity. Symptoms of 
this conflict may also be observed in the hu- 
man world, in the antagonism of systems, 
the hatred of parties, the wars and revolu- 
tions between sovereigns and nations. 

The majority of men stand amid these 
great spiritual movements, with blind faith, 
blind obedience, blind hatred and fury, 
neither hearing with their own ears nor 
seeing with their own eyes, but directed by 



56 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

other spirits towards ends and aims of 
which they know nothing, allowing them- 
selves to be led on through misery, slavery, 
and death, following the impulse of those 
higher spirits like a herd of cattle. 

On the other side, there are men who, 
both acting and directing, influence the 
movement with clear consciousness and in- 
ward independence. But, after all, they are 
only voluntary means to great predestined 
ends, whose free actions may indeed deter- 
mine the way and rate of the progress, but 
not its end and object. Those men who 
have accomplished great things in the world, 
were enabled to do so by their insight into 
the spiritual tendency of the period in which 
they lived, and they succeeded because they 
made their free acting and thinking agree 
with that tendency, while other men, per- 
haps just as great and sincere, failed, be- 
cause they opposed that tendency. That 
first class of men were elected by the Spirit 
who knows which ways are best for which 
ends, to be new centres for his moving pow- 
ers, not in the manner of blind tools, but 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 57 

of living instruments serving his wisdom 
and justice, of their own free will and with 
their own powers of intellect. It is not the 
slave under the taskmaster that does the 
better work. And what they begin to work 
in the service of God beneath, they will 
continue hereafter, when they are partakers 
of His heavenly kingdom. 



CHAPTER V. 

ON many occasions when the spirits of 
the living and dead meet, they may 
both be unconscious of the meeting ; 
or the consciousness may be on one side 
only — who is there that could follow or 
fathom such intercourse ! So let it be under- 
stood that, whenever we speak of their meet- 
ing each other, we mean that they meet 
consciously, and whenever we speak of the 
presence of the dead, we mean that they 
are present consciously. 

There is one means of meeting conscious- 
ly for the living and the dead: it is the 
memory of the living for the dead. To di- 
rect our attention to the dead is to attract 
their attention towards us, just as an out- 
ward impression on a living person will 
direct his attention to the place where it 
acts upon him. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 59 

Our memory of the dead is indeed noth- 
ing but a consequence of their own con- 
scious life beneath; a consequence brought 
to our consciousness; but their whole life 
in the hereafter is made up of the conse- 
quences of their present life. 

Even when one living person thinks of 
another, it may cause some influence on his 
mind ; but it is of no effect, as his conscious- 
ness is held within the bonds of his earthly 
frame. But consciousness set free by death 
seeks its own place, yielding to the influ- 
ences exercised upon it the more easily and 
decidedly, the more easily and decidedly 
those influences have been exercised be- 
fore. 

A stroke in the physical world is always 
felt double, by him that strikes and by him 
that is struck: so a stroke of consciousness, 
produced by thinking of a dead person, is 
connected with a double sensation. It is a 
mistake to think of the share only which 
our present life has in that mental act, un- 
mindful of the share of the life hereafter: 



60 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

a mistake and neglect which cannot remain 
without their consequences. 

If a lover has lost his beloved one, a hus- 
band his wife, a child its mother, it is in 
vain for them to look to distant heavens 
for the piece torn off their own lives, strain- 
ing their eyes and stretching out their hands 
into vacancy for that which has never been 
really taken away from them; it is only the 
thread of bodily communication that is bro- 
ken; the intercourse through their outer 
senses, whereby they both understood each 
other, has given way to an immediate con- 
nection through their inner senses, though 
they have not yet learned to understand it. 

I saw a mother once looking anxiously 
about the house and garden for her own 
living child which all the time she was car- 
rying in her arms. A greater mistake than 
hers is the mistake of her who will look 
for her dead child in some distant space, 
whereas it would suffice to look into her 
own self to find it. And if she does not 
find it there entire, was it entire, was it all 
her own, strictly speaking, while she car- 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 6 1 

ried it in her arms? It is true, the advan- 
tages of outward intercourse, of outward 
words, looks, and care-taking are lost to 
both; the advantages of an inward inter- 
couse have only begun now, if she would 
only recognize that there is such an inward 
intercourse and see the advantages it has. 
Nobody will speak to or shake hands with 
a person whom he supposes to be absent; 
but if you once know better, and have 
learned to see in a clearer light, there will 
be for you a new life of the living with their 
dead, and the dead will gain by this knowl- 
edge no less than the living. 

If you think of a dead person earnestly 
and intensely, not only the thought of him 
or her, but the dead person himself will be 
in your mind immediately. You may in- 
wardly conjure him, he must come to you ; 
you may hold him, he must stay with you, 
if you only fix your thoughts upon him. 
Think of him in love or in hatred, he will 
be sure to feel it; think of him with strong 
love, with stronger hatred, he will feel it 
the more strongly. Up to this you have 



62 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

had your memories of the dead, now you 
know the use of them; henceforth you will 
be able at will to make a dead person happy 
or miserable, through thinking of him, to 
reconcile yourself to him or quarrel with 
him, consciously for him as well as for your- 
self. Do so, then, but always for a good 
purpose, and take care that the memory 
which you leave behind one day may be to 
your own advantage. 

Blessed the man who left behind him a 
store of love, of respect, and veneration, in 
the memory of men. What he left behind 
in his present life he will gain after death, 
acquiring a comprehensive consciousness 
of all that is thought of him by those who 
remain behind ; he will thus carry home the 
bushel of which he had but single grains 
to count in his lifetime. Such are the treas- 
ures which we are bidden to lay up for 
heaven. 

Woe to the man whom curses and exe- 
crations, a memory of terror, follow ! What 
followed him in this life will overtake him 
in death : this is part of the hell that awaits 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 63 

him. Each cry of misery that is sent after 
him will turn out a sharp arrow reaching 
him to pierce his very heart. 

Full justice is done to every man : it con- 
sists in the totality of the consequences of 
both his good and evil actions. The good 
man who was misjudged here must suffer 
from that circumstance for some time, here- 
after, as from an outward evil ; and his false 
glory will follow the unjust man as an out- 
ward good; therefore, it will be well for 
you to keep your good name unsullied and 
not to hide your light under a bushel. But 
among the spirits hereafter there will be no 
misjudging; what was weighed amiss here 
will be set right above, and w T ill be over- 
weighed by an addition to the other side of 
the balance. Divine justice shall finally 
overcome all injustice of the earth. 

Whatever wakens the memory of the dead 
is a means of calling them to our side. At 
every festival arranged to commemorate 
them, they rise; round every statue which 
we erect in their honor, they float ; to every 
song celebrating their noble acts, they listen. 



64 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

Here is a vital germ for a new phase of art ! 
Art has grown so old, so tired of repeating 
old spectacles before the old lookers-on 
again and again; here is another tier of 
boxes opening, as it were, above the pit 
filled with the old spectators ; now we know 
of a company of a higher class looking down 
from above, and the noblest object of art 
will be, henceforth, to please those above, 
no longer those below; but the people be- 
low ought to be pleased with that which is 
approved of above. 

The scoffers go on scoffing and the 
churches continue quarreling — scoffing and 
quarrelling about a mystery which the scoff- 
ers say is repugnant to reason, and which 
the churches declare is above reason ; for a 
greater secret has remained concealed from 
both parties, the opening of which removes 
at last, in a very simple and easy manner, 
the difficulty which has defied the reason of 
scoffers and disturbed the harmony of the 
churches; it is simply the greatest illustra- 
tion of a universal law, wherein they would 
see an exception to and above all law. It 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 65 

is not in a mere body of flour and water 
that Christ is received by the faithful par- 
taker of His holy Supper. If you receive 
it in the thought of Him, He is with His 
thoughts not only near you, but within you ; 
the more earnestly you think of Him the 
more closely He will unite Himself with 
you. But if you do not think of Him at 
all, you eat and drink nothing but common 
bread and common wine. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE longing of every man to be, after 
his death, once more united with 
those he loved most dearly in this 
life, shall be fulfilled in a more perfect de- 
gree than you ever thought of or hoped 
for. 

Those who were united in their life by a 
common spiritual element shall, in the here- 
after, not only meet, but grow together, 
through that very element which shall be- 
come a mutual organ of their spirits, of 
which they both partake with equal con- 
sciousness. For even now the dead and 
the living, as well as the living among each 
other, are grown into one by numberless 
elements of that kind, elements which they 
have in common; but not till death has un- 
done the bonds in which this frame of ours 
holds every soul of the living, will the union 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 67 

of their consciousness be enhanced into a 
consciousness of their union. In the mo- 
ment of death every one will realize the 
fact that what his mind received from those 
who died before him, never ceased to be- 
long to their minds as well, and thus he 
will enter the third world not like a strange 
visitor, but like a long expected member of 
the family, who is welcomed home by all 
those with whom he was here united in the 
community of faith, of knowledge, or of 
love. 

We shall also enter into close fellowship 
with the great spirits of those who lived, 
in their second stage of life, long before us, 
but whose great example and wisdom served 
to form our own minds. Thus he who lived 
here entirely in Christ will be entirely in 
Christ hereafter; nor is his individuality to 
be extinguished within a higher individuali- 
ty; nay, he will be established, and receive 
new strength, and at the same time be able 
to strengthen others. For such spirits as 
are grown into one by their common ele- 
ments must profit by each other's strength, 



68 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

while, at the same time, they influence each 
other through their different elements. 
Some spirits will strengthen each other in 
many parts of their character, while others 
have only few points of coincidence and of 
mutual interest; some of these alliances 
brought about by the kindred elements in 
different spirits may be dissolved again, but 
those whose tendency is towards truth, vir- 
tue, and beauty will continue. 

All things which have no elements of 
eternal harmony in them, though continu- 
ing beyond this life, must one day vanish 
away, thereby separating those spirits who 
for some time were united in an unworthy 
alliance working for no good. 

Though the different elements of human 
spirits contain, for the greater part, some 
germ of the true, the beautiful, and the 
good, that germ is, in this life, covered up 
and encumbered with much that is trifling, 
corrupted, false, and wrong. The spirits 
united by such elements may, in after-life, 
either remain united or not: for they may 
either hold what is right and good, leaving 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 69 

that which is wrong and wicked to the evil 
spirits whose company they shun; or some 
of them may keep the good, others the bad, 
elements. 

On the other hand, spirits united by their 
mutual ownership of some element or idea 
of the true, the beautiful, or the good, in its 
eternal purity, will remain united by them 
for ever, sharing for ever the same spiritual 
property. 

In the same measure, therefore, as the 
higher spirits comprehend the eternal ideas, 
they will grow together in larger spiritual 
organisms; and as the roots of all individual 
ideas are in general ideas, and theirs again' 
in more general and universal ideas, so at 
last will all the spirits be united — in won- 
derful organization — with the greatest of 
spirits, with God. 

Thus the spiritual world, in its perfection, 
is not a mere gathering together of spirits, 
but it may be likened to a living tree of 
spirits, with its roots in the earth and its 
crown reaching throughout the heavens. 

Only the greatest and noblest spirits, as 



JO ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

Christ and His Saints, are able to reach, 
immediately, with the best part of their be- 
ing, the inward height and greatness of 
God ; the smaller and minor spirits take root 
in them as twigs in branches, and branches 
in trees, connected, through their mediation, 
with the highest essence of the most High. 

Dead geniuses and saints are, therefore, 
the true mediators between God and men, 
partaking, on one side, of the ideas of God 
and communicating them to men, and feel- 
ing, on the other side, the joys and suffer- 
ings of mankind and communicating them 
to God. 

In the very beginnings of religious life 
the worship of the dead was closely con- 
nected with the worship of deified nature; 
the savage races have retained the greater, 
the civilized races the higher part of those 
views, and there is no people or community 
that do not hold more or less of them as a 
chief article of faith. Therefore, every 
town ought to have a shrine for their own 
great dead, which might be built close by, 
or right within the temple of God, whereas 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. Jl 

Christ alone ought to be always worshiped 
in the same place w T ith God Himself. 



CHAPTER VII. 

" Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then 
face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I 
know even as also I am known." I Cor. xiii. 12. 

MAN leads both an outward and an in- 
ward life in this world ; the one visi- 
ble and perceptible for every one in 
his looks, words, works, and deeds; the 
other perceptible only for himself in his 
thoughts and emotions. The continuation 
of the visible life into the world around 
may be easily traced, the continuation of 
the invisible life remains invisible, but is 
by no means wanting. For as man's in- 
ward life forms the centre of his present 
existence, its continuation will form the cen- 
tre of his future existence. 

Indeed, the effects which a person pro- 
duces in a form visible and perceptible to 
the living, are not the only emanation from 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 73 

him. However minute and gentle a vibra- 
tion connected with some conscious move- 
ment within our mind may be — and all 
our mental acts are connected with, and ac- 
companied by, such vibrations of our brain 
— it cannot vanish without producing con- 
tinued processes of a similar nature, within 
ourselves, and, finally, around ourselves, 
though we are not able to trace them into 
the outer world. As little as the lute can 
keep its music to itself, so little can our 
brain. The music of sounds or of thoughts 
originates in the lute or in the brain, but 
does not stay there : it spreads beyond them. 
What a wonderfully complicated play of 
vibrations of a higher order, originating in 
our brain, may be going on along with the 
coarser and lower play that strikes our eyes 
and ears, something like the most delicate 
ripple on the big waves of a lake, or the 
finely traced ornaments on the surface of 
a carpet, which receives its whole value and 
higher meaning from them. The man of 
science knows and studies the play of waves 
of a lower order only, little caring for 



74 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

those of a higher order. He does not per- 
ceive them, but knowing" the principle, he 
ought not to- neglect the inferences that may 
be derived from it. 1 

Therefore, the effects produced by human 
spirits are not limited to their continued in- 
fluence upon us by means of their percepti- 
ble outer life in the present stage: along 
with this outer part there is in our nature 
another imperceptible inner part, even the 
essential part of the human being. Sup- 
pose a man to have lived and died in some 
desert island without any direct influence 
on other people's lives : he must continue in 
his individuality, in expectance of future 

1 Whether we attribute the action of the nerves to 
chemical or electrical processes, we either ascribe 
them to the vibrations of ultimate particles, or at 
least assume them to be evoked by or connected with 
them, though the imponderable substance may herein 
be of greater moment than the ponderable. Now vi- 
brations can only seem to die out, in so far as they 
spread indefinitely in all directions; or, if dying out 
for a time, transformed into energy or tension, they 
are able to begin afresh, in some form or other, in 
accordance with the law of the conservation of en- 
ergy. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 75 

development, having been unable to develop 
himself in this life through intercourse with 
his fellow-men. In the same way a child, 
which has been alive only for a moment, can 
never die again. The shortest moment of 
conscious life produces a circle of influences 
around it, just as the briefest tone that 
seems gone in a second, produces a similar 
circle, which carries the tone into endless 
space, far beyond the persons standing by 
to listen; for no action, or effect, is utterly 
destroyed, it goes on producing new effects 
of its kind for ever. Thus the mind of a 
child will develop itself from that one con- 
scious moment, as well as the mind of that 
isolated man, but in a different way from 
what it would have done when beginning 
from a more developed state. 

It is only in death that a man becomes 
fully conscious of all the influence he exer- 
cised on other men's minds; in the same 
way will he acquire only in death full pos- 
session and use of what he has fashioned 
within himself. What mental treasures he 
gathered in all his life, what fills his mem- 



j6 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

ory, what pervades his feelings, what his 
mind and fancy created, will remain his 
property for ever. The connection and in- 
terdependence of all these mental stores re- 
mains dark to us in this life. Thoughts 
will occasionally pass through this treasure- 
house, lighting up with their rays the little 
corner that lies on their way, and leaving 
the rest in obscurity. Our mind never real- 
izes its inward fulness all at once. Detached 
ideas only, happening to find a new idea to 
associate with, will emerge from the dark 
for a moment, to sink back into the dark the 
next moment. Thus man is a stranger to 
his own mind, in which he gropes in the 
dark, trusting to his syllogisms to guide 
him,, and often forgetting the best of his 
treasures, which happen to lie out of his 
way concealed by the darkness which covers 
the regions of the human spirit. In the 
moment of death, however, when eternal 
night sinks down on his bodily eyes, a new 
day will break upon his spirit; the centre 
of the inner man will kindle into a sun, 
which sheds its radiance over all his spir- 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH, ^ 

itual stores, and at the same time penetrates 
into and looks through them as an inward 
eye of unearthly keenness. All that he had 
forgotten here, he will find again there; he 
only forgot it because it went to the here- 
after before him, where he finds it all 
gathered up for him, in a new and univer- 
sal light, which saves him the trouble of 
collecting what he wants to associate, and 
dividing what he wants to separate. At a 
glance he will be able to survey all that is 
in him, his various ideas in their relations 
of agreement and contradiction, of connec- 
tion and separation — not confined to one 
particular direction of his thoughts, but look- 
ing into every direction at once. There are 
instances of persons approaching such a 
state of inward illumination, even in this 
life, in cases of approaching death, as by 
drowning, or in somnambulism, or narco- 
sis, and such like. 

As high as the flight and sight of a bird 
mount above the lowly path of the blind 
crawling caterpillar, that knows of nothing 
but what it touches in its slow movements, 



78 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

so far will that higher state of knowledge 
surpass our present state. So that in death 
not only our body, but our senses, our in- 
tellect, the whole constitution of our mind, 
must be cast off, as forms too narrow for 
our life hereafter, as useless members for a 
new order of things, where everything that 
we could approach and investigate but slow- 
ly and imperfectly with such earthly organs, 
will be immediately within ourselves, for us 
to look through, to know, and to enjoy. 
Every man's own self, however, in the mid- 
dle of that dissolution of temporary forms, 
will remain unimpaired in its whole extent 
and development, and there will be for him 
a new and higher life instead of the inferior 
kind of activity which has been extinguished. 
The turmoil of thoughts is hushed; they 
need no longer come and go, and move 
about, to become conscious of their relation 
to each other. The present intercourse of 
thoughts, will give way to a higher inter- 
course, between spirits and spirits. And as 
the intercourse of human thoughts takes 
place in a human spirit, so the intercourse 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 79 

and communion of spirits will take place in 
that higher spirit whose all-connecting cen- 
tre we call God. For them no language is 
required to understand, no eye to see and 
recognize each other. Just as one thought 
of ours understands and influences another 
without the mediation of mouth, ear, or 
hand; as thoughts meet and part without 
an outward link or separation; so secret, 
close, and immediate will the communion of 
spirits be. There is nothing those spirits 
will be able to conceal from each other; 
every sinful thought that lurked here in 
some dark corner of the mind, everything a 
man would like to cover up from his fellow- 
men with a thousand hands, will lie clear 
and open to every spirit. Only those spirits, 
therefore, that were ail pure and true in this 
life, will be able to meet other spirits un- 
ashamed hereafter; and those that were set 
aside and misjudged here will be under- 
stood and appreciated hereafter. Again, 
every spirit will with a self-penetrating eye 
perceive all his own defects, all he left un- 
finished, imperfect, and discordant within 



80 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

himself here, and perceiving these defects 
will feel them with the same keenness of 
sensation with which we feel our bodily de- 
fects. And as in the human mind one 
thought may help to free the other from 
all that is deficient in it, and as they asso- 
ciate into higher thoughts, supplying in this 
wise what is imperfect in each of them: 
just so the communion of spirits will serve 
them as a means of progress towards per- 
fection. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MAN'S relations with nature, in this 
life, are of a material as well as of 
a spiritual kind. Heat, air, water, 
earth enter into and issue from him in every 
direction, forming and changing his body. 
Around him, they move side by side, within 
him they meet and combine, and in their 
combination make up a frame, which shuts 
off his bodily sensations and whatever there 
is still deeper than these within him, from 
immediate contact with the outer world. 
Thus he looks and feels into the outer world 
through the windows of his senses, and 
draws fragmentary knowledge out of it as 
in little buckets. 

After his death, however, when his bodily 
frame sinks into decay, the spirit, fettered 
and encumbered no longer, will roam 
throughout nature in unbound liberty. 



82 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

Then he will feel the waves of light and 
sound not only as they strike his eyes and 
ears, but as they glide along in the oceans 
of air and of ether; he will feel not only 
the breathing of the wind and the heaving 
of the sea against his body bathing in them, 
but float along through air and sea himself; 
he will no longer walk among verdant trees 
and fragrant meadows, but consciously per- 
vade the fields, and forests, and men as they 
walk about them. 

Thus, what he loses in passing to a high- 
er stage of life are nothing but organs the 
imperfect aid of which he can gladly dis- 
pense with in a state of existence where he 
shall feel, and perfectly and actually take 
in, everything that, on a lower stage, lay 
outside his own self and could not be ap- 
proached but by such slow mediation. Why 
should we take our eyes and ears with us 
into the life to come, to draw in light and 
sound from living nature's well, when the 
waves of that future life shall move in har- 
mony and union with the very waves of 
light and sound? Nay more: The human 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 83 

eye, though kindred to the sun, is but a tiny- 
thing, perceiving of the glory of the skies 
but little sparkling dots. Man's longing to 
know more of the heavens is not gratified 
in this life. Though he invent telescopes 
to enlarge the power and capacity of his 
eyes, it is in vain — the stars are only so 
many dots for him. So he hopes to attain 
in the life to come what his present life 
cannot afford him, he trusts to have his 
longings satisfied when he shall go to* heav- 
en, and to see, henceforth, distinctly every- 
thing that was hidden from his earthly sight. 
And he is right in hoping so, though he 
shall not receive wings to go to heaven and 
fly from star to star with, or from the 
heavens visible above us to higher heavens 
yet unseen; there are no> such wings in the 
nature of things. Nor is he to see the heav- 
ens in being carried from one star to another 
in a succession of new births; there is no 
stork to carry babies from star to star. Nor 
will his eye receive more visual power to 
penetrate into the farthest distances of 
heaven, by being turned into the largest 



84 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

kind of telescope; the principle of our earth- 
ly vision would prove insufficient there. 
When, as a conscious part of the great celes- 
tial body that carries and holds him — the 
Earth — he consciously partakes in the in- 
tercourse, through light, between this and 
other heavenly beings : then shall he see his 
longing gratified. 

What, a new kind of sight? Well, it 
would not be fit for men below, just as our 
present sight would not suffice for the heav- 
ens above. 1 Through heavenly space the 
Earth floats along, an enormous eye, im- 
mersed in an ocean of the light which pro- 
ceeds from numberless stars, and wheeling 
round and round to receive, on all sides, 
the impact of its waves, which cross and 
cross again, a million of times, without 
ever disturbing each other. It is with that 
eye man shall one day learn to see, meeting 
with the spreading waves of his future life 
the outward waves of the surrounding ether, 

1 Lest this assumption, apparently involving serious 
difficulties, might be considered thoughtless, I shall 
more fully explain the meaning of it in an appendix. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH 85 

and undisturbed by the encountering waves, 
penetrating, with its most subtle vibrations, 
into the depths of heaven. 

Learn to see, indeed! A great many 
things man will have to learn after his 
death. For you must not expect that you 
shall take in, on your very entrance into it, 
the whole splendor of heaven, which is in 
store for the life to come. Even here a 
child must learn to see and hear; what it 
sees and hears in the beginning are sights 
and sounds meaningless for it, dazzling, 
stunning, confusing. The same will be the 
case, in the life to come, with what is of- 
fered to the new senses of the new child. 
Only what man takes away with him of this 
life, the remembrance of all he has done, 
thought, and been here, he will see clearly 
and distinctly within him, as soon as he 
enters that new life: though this will pri- 
marily leave him very much the same man 
he has been. And you may be sure that 
the foolish, the idle, the wicked shall profit 
by the glory of the hereafter only so far as 
they are made to see the discord of their 



86 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

lives, and are compelled, in the end, to give 
up their old evil ways. Even for his pres- 
ent life man has received an eye to see all 
the marvels of heaven and earth, an ear to 
drink in the sounds of music and of human 
speech, an understanding to grasp the mean- 
ing of all these things — yet, what is the 
use of eye, ear, or mind to the foolish, 
the idle, the wicked? 

The best and highest things of the life to 
come, as well as of the present life, are only 
for the best and highest men, who alone 
understand, appreciate, and help to pro- 
duce, them. Thus only the higher class of 
spirits will be enabled to understand, and 
take an active part in, the conscious inter- 
course of the celestial being that carries 
them with other beings of the " company 
of heaven." 

Whether, after seons of years, this earth 
of ours, revolving round the sun in closer 
and closer orbits, shall return to the womb 
whence it issued, for a new, solar life to 
begin for all earthly creatures — who 
knows ? And would it behoove us to know, 
at present? 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE spirits of the third stage will dwell 
in the regions of this Earth, whereof 
mankind itself forms a part, as in a 
common body, and all the processes in na- 
ture will be to them the same as the pro- 
cesses in our bodies are to us at present. 
Their body will enclose the bodies of the 
second stage of life as a common mother, 
just as the bodies of the second stage en- 
close those of the first. But a spirit of the 
third stage has for his own share the com- 
mon body which he contributed to form and 
develop during his earthly life. Whatever 
in this world has become, through the ex- 
istence of a certain human being, different 
from what it would have been without him, 
helps to constitute his new existence, grown 
out of the common root of all existence, 
and made up, partly of solid institutions 



88 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

and works, partly of moving and spreading 
effects, similarly to the way our present body 
is made up of solid material, and of change- 
able material kept together by the solid. 

Now, as the spheres of existence wherein 
the lives of higher spirits move must neces- 
sarily intersect, the question arises how is it 
possible for such numberless spheres to cross 
and recross each other without disturbing 
and confusing each other. But you may as 
well ask how it is possible for numberless 
water waves to cross in the same lake, for 
numberless air waves to cross in the same 
atmosphere, for numberless waves of light 
to cross in the same ether, for numberless 
waves of memory to cross in the same brain, 
for numberless spheres of human lives — 
the germs and substructions of their after- 
lives — to cross in this world without dis- 
turbing and confusing each other. On the 
contrary, they only produce a movement 
and life, of a higher order, of those waves, 
those memories, those lives of the second, 
and also of the third stage. 

But what is there that keeps those cross- 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 89 

ing spheres of consciousness asunder? Noth- 
ing is there to keep them asunder in any 
particular points of coincidence, for they 
all have their points in common, though 
they belong to each of them in a different 
manner : this is what separates them and dis- 
tinguishes them as individuals. Or would 
you ask what there is to distinguish or sep- 
arate the intersecting wave circles? You 
are able to distinguish them outwardly, 
though they are all alike; and it must be 
much easier for spheres of consciousness to 
distinguish each other and themselves in- 
wardly. 

When you get a letter from India or Aus- 
tralia having its pages crossed with writing 
in different directions, how do you manage 
to distinguish the two sets of lines? Sim- 
ply by the inner connection of each set. 
Now, the world may be compared to such a 
sheet crossed with divers sets of writing, in 
ever so many directions, every set reading 
itself as it stands by itself, and reading as 
well the other sets by which it is crossed. 



90 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

But that letter is only a very inadequate 
symbol of the world. 

How, then, can consciousness remain one, 
when spread over such an extended space? 
Is there not the law about " the Threshold 
of Consciousness " ? * You may as well 
ask how can it remain one in the more lim- 
ited space of your body, of which that more 
extended space is only a continuation. Your 
body, your brain, are they mere points ? Or 
is there one particular point in them, the 
seat of the soul? There is no such point. 
The nature of your soul at present is to 

1 This empirical law of the reciprocity of body and 
mind states, that consciousness is extinguished 
whenever the bodily activity on which it depends, 
sinks below a certain degree of strength, called the 
Threshold. The more extended this activity, the 
more it will be weakened, and the more easily it will 
sink below the threshold. There is such a thresh- 
old for our consciousness as a whole — the limit be- 
tween sleeping and waking — and a particular one for 
every particular sphere of the mind. Hence, in the 
waking state, the one or the other idea will rise up 
or sink in our mind, according as the particular ac- 
tivity on which it depends rises above, or sinks below, 
its respective threshold. 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 91 

maintain the connection between all the parts 
of your small body; hereafter it will be, to 
maintain the more extensive connection of 
all the parts of your larger body. The 
spirit of God maintains the connection of the 
whole Universe, and would you look for 
God in a point? And one day you shall 
more fully partake of His ubiquity. 

Or, if you are afraid that the waves of 
your future life may be too extended to rise 
to the threshold which they reach and over- 
step in this life, you ought to consider that, 
far from spreading into an empty world 
where they would indeed sink into an abyss, 
they spread into a world, which, as the 
eternal foundation of the spirit of God, will 
be a foundation of yours as well : for it is 
only as supported by and enclosed in the 
divine life that any creature can live. 

The little wren, carried on the eagle's 
'back, can easily soar above the mountain 
tops, which she could never do for herself; 
she can even fly a little higher, above the 
eagle's back where she rested. But both 
eagle and wren remain in the care of God. 



92 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH, 

Another question arises — how, after 
death, we shall be able to exist without our 
brain, that wonderful structure which at 
present supports all our mental activity, de- 
veloping itself in the same measure as that 
activity grows and develops itself — was it 
given to us for no purpose? It would be 
the same question, how the plant can exist 
without the seed out of which it bursts forth 
into life, and grows into light: the seed, 
another such wonderful structure, develop- 
ing itself more and more through its own 
vitality; was that seed made for no pur- 
pose ? 

Now you ask, is there, in all the world 
around us, another structure as wonderful 
as the human brain, that might take its 
place in after-life, or is there any structure 
even superior to it : for the life to come will 
no doubt be superior to the present life. 
But is not your body, as a whole, a larger 
and grander structure than your eye, your 
ear, your brain, or any of its parts? And 
again the world of which mankind, with 
their commonwealths, their sciences, arts, 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 93 

and commerce form only a part, is in the 
same degree, nay in an unspeakably higher 
degree, superior to your little brain, which 
is only a part or particle of that part. To 
gain a higher view of the subject, you must 
not take the earth for a mere ball of land 
and water and air; the earth is indeed a 
larger and higher individual creature than 
yourself, a heavenly being, with a more 
wonderful living and moving on its surface 
than you carry about in your own little 
brain, contributing thereby your own small 
share to the earth life. It is vain for you 
to dream of a life to come, if you fail to 
recognize the life around you. 

What does the anatomist see in a man's 
brain? It is to him a labyrinth of whitish 
filaments, the meaning of which he cannot 
read. And what does the brain see in it- 
self? A world of light, and sound, and 
thoughts, associations, fancies, emotions of 
love and hatred. This will help you to 
realize the difference between that which 
you see of the world, looking at it from the 
outside, and that which the world sees with- 



94 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

in itself. Then you will no longer expect 
that in the world as a whole the inside and 
the outside ought to resemble one another 
more than in the case of yourself, as a part 
of the world. And only because you are a 
part of the world you are enabled to see 
within yourself a part of that which the 
world sees in itself. 

Finally, you may ask what it is that in 
after-life, and not till then, wakens our 
larger body, so to speak. For that body 
exists at present, growing and spreading 
into the outer world as a continuation of our 
present narrow body. Well, it wakens from 
the very fact that this narrow body falls 
asleep, or rather decays. It is only an in- 
stance of the universal rule, which prevails 
throughout this present life, whence we con- 
clude that it will continue hereafter. In 
your sceptic way, you insist on drawing all 
your conclusions from this life; so you ought 
to draw this one also. 

Conscious energy is in fact never pro- 
duced afresh, nor can it be absolutely de- 
stroyed. Similar to the body with which 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 95 

it is connected, it may change its place, 
form, and activity, in time and space. 
When it sinks to-day in one place, it will 
rise in another place to-morrow. That your 
eye may be awake, may see consciously, 
your ear must go to sleep for a while ; that 
your mental activity may be roused, your 
senses must sleep for a while; a feeling of 
pain in some minute part of your body may 
for a time extinguish all your conscious- 
ness. When directed to a large range of 
subjects at once, the light of attention will 
necessarily shine but feebly on the details; 
when it is concentrated on one point, all 
the rest will recede into darkness ; to reflect 
on something is to abstract from other 
things. You are awake to-day because you 
slept yesterday, and the more active you 
have been in waking, the sounder will be 
your sleep. 

Now, in this life, our sleep, in a certain 
sense, is only half-sleep, allowing the old 
man to waken again, because the old man 
is still here; in death our sleep will be full 
sleep, out of which shall waken a new man, 



96 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

for the old man is not: but the old rule 
holds good again, which demands an equiv- 
alent of your former consciousness; and as 
there is a new body instead of the old one, 
being a continuation of the same, so there 
will be a new consciousness, as an equiva- 
lent and continuation of the old one. 

A continuation, I say; for whatever pre- 
serves, in the old man, the consciousness 
that dwelled in the body of the child, though 
there is not an atom of it left in his body, 
will preserve, in his future life, the same 
consciousness that dwelled in the body of 
the old man, of which not an atom will be 
left in the new body. For in either case the 
new body preserves the effects of the for- 
mer body, the organ of his former con- 
sciousness, and is itself the outgrowth of it. 
Thus there is one principle for the continua- 
tion of our present life, from this day to the 
morrow, and for the continuation of the 
present life into the life to come. And 
could there be any principle but an eternal 
one for the eternal continuation of human 
life? 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH 97 

As little need you ask, how it is that the 
effects produced by you in this world, which 
have spread around and beyond yourself, 
belong to you more properly and more close- 
ly than any other effects lying beyond your 
sphere. The reason for this is in their ori- 
gin from you. Every cause retains its ef- 
fects as an eternal property. And, after all, 
your acts never went beyond you; even in 
this life, they formed an unconscious con- 
tinuation of yourself, only waiting to be 
wakened to new consciousness. 

As little as a man, when once alive, can 
ever die again, as little could he have wak- 
ened into life had he not been alive be- 
fore; only he was not alive individually. 
The consciousness which wakens in a child 
at its birth is only a part of the eternal and 
universal consciousness concentrated in this 
new soul. To follow this living power of 
consciousness through all its ways and 
changes involves no greater difficulty than 
following the living power of the body. 

Perhaps you are afraid that human con- 
sciousness, being born of the universal con- 



98 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

sciousness, may be again absorbed into the 
same. Behold the tree! What a time it 
took for the stem to grow branches; but 
once here they cannot be swallowed up into 
the stem again, else the tree could not 
grow and develop itself: but the tree of 
universal life must grow and develop itself 
as well. 

After all, to draw any conclusion from 
this life about the hereafter, we must not 
take our stand on unknown causes or self- 
made premises; but on known facts, from 
whence to proceed to the greater and higher 
facts of after-life, and thus to strengthen 
and support our belief from below, in addi- 
tion to higher arguments, and vitally to con- 
nect this belief with practical life. If we 
did not need this faith, we should require 
no support for it ; but what would be its use 
without such support? 



CHAPTER X. 

THE human soul is spread throughout 
the body; when the soul departs the 
body decays. But the consciousness 
of the soul is in different places at different 
times. 1 You may watch it wandering about 
in our narrow body, now corresponding 
with the eye, now with the ear, with the 
outer and inner senses. In death, it will 
wander beyond our body, like a man who, 
having had his little house destroyed where- 

1 Or, to express it more exactly, consciousness is 
present and awake when and where the activity of 
the body underlying the activity of the mind — the 
psycho-physical activity — exceeds that degree of 
strength which we call the threshold. According to 
this view, consciousness can be localized in time and 
space. The summits of the waves of our psycho- 
physical activity move and change about from place 
to place, though confined, in this life, to our body, 
even to a limited part of our body, and in sleep they 
sink below the threshold to rise again in waking. 



IOO ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

in he moved about for years, leaves it for 
ever to wander to distant countries. Death 
separates our two lives only so far as it 
takes us from the narrow scene of our wan- 
derings to a wider one. Now, in this life 
consciousness cannot be in every place at 
once; the same in after-life. But the range 
of its wanderings will be incomparably 
wider, with freer roads, with higher points 
of view, embracing all the lower ones of 
the present life. 

Even in this life it may happen, though 
very rarely, that the light of consciousness 
wanders from the narrow body into the 
larger body, and returning home gives in- 
formation about things which are taking 
place far away in space, or things which, 
springing from present circumstances, will 
take place in some future time: for the 
length of the future rests on the breadth of 
the present. Sometimes a little rift will 
open, and quickly close again, in the other- 
wise closed door between this world and the 
next, the door which only death shall open 
for ever and aye. Nor is it well for us to 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 1 01 

peep through those rifts before the time. 
But such exceptions to the rule of our pres- 
ent life are still in harmony with the greater 
rule which embraces both this life and the 
life hereafter. 

Sometimes the narrower body will fall 
asleep to a certain extent, in an uncommon 
way, wakening in a no less uncommon way, 
in another direction, beyond its usual limits, 
though not so completely as to awaken no 
more. Or, some part of our larger body 
is impressed with such uncommon intensity 
as to draw our consciousness, for a while, 
away from our narrower body, to rise above 
the threshold in an unusual place. Hence 
the wonders of clairvoyance, of presenti- 
ments, and dreams — mere fables, if our 
future body and our future life are fables, 
otherwise signs of the one and predictions 
of the other : and if a thing has its signs, it 
must exist; if it has predictions, it will come. 

However, all those things are no signs of 
a healthy life. For in this life we have only 
to build up our bodies for the hereafter, not 
to see or hear with the eyes and ears of the 



102* ON LIFE AFTER DEATH, 

hereafter. A flower when opened before its 
time will not thrive. And though our be- 
lief in a life to come may be supported by- 
such occasional glances caught in this life, 
it must not take its foundation on them. 
A sound and healthy belief is founded on 
arguments, and it reaches to the highest 
points of view of a healthy life, being itself 
essential to the health and integrity of such 
a life. 

Did you take the faint image in which a 
dead person appears in your memory for a 
mere inward semblance? If so, you are 
mistaken; it is more than that, it is your 
friend's own self, consciously coming, not 
only near you, but into you. His former 
shape is still the garment of his soul, though 
no longer encumbered with his former solid 
body and wandering slowly along with him, 
but transparent and light, free from earthly 
burdens, changing its place in a moment, at 
the call of every person who thinks of him, 
or even entering into your mind of his own 
accord, thus causing you to remember him 
who is dead. The old idea, so generally 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 103 

adopted, of the souls of the dead as light, 
bodiless, unbounded by space, is quite a cor- 
rect view of the subject, without earnestly- 
meaning to be so. 

You have also heard of ghosts appearing 
— what the doctors call phantasms or hal- 
lucinations. They are indeed hallucinations 
of the living, but, at the same time, real 
manifestations of the dead. The faint im- 
ages in our memory are such manifestations, 
those vivid apparitions are only the more 
so. It is no use worrying whether they 
be one thing or the other, for they are really 
both things at a time. And as you are not 
frightened by the images within you, being 
present manifestations of spirits, you need 
no more be frightened by the apparitions 
before you. Though, after all, in a certain 
sense, there is reason for being frightened. 
The images of the memory are either called 
up by yourself, or they come, quietly and 
peacefully, in the course of your inner life, 
as helps to its development; the other class 
of manifestations come unbidden, too strong 
to be kept back, standing before you it 



104 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

seems, but, in reality, standing within you, 
not to help, but rather to disturb the working 
of your inner life; such a presence is an ab- 
normal one, belonging at the same time to 
this life and the next. The dead and the 
living ought not to hold intercourse in this 
way. To see dead persons almost as dis- 
tinctly and objectively as spirits see each 
other, is almost death to the living; hence 
the fright of the living caused by their pres- 
ence. And as, in those cases, the dead re- 
turn half-way from the realms beyond the 
grave to the land this side the grave, popu- 
lar belief — not an unfounded belief, per- 
haps — will have it that only those spirits 
walk about here that are not released yet, 
but still earth-bound with a heavy chain. 
To drive away the unblessed spirit, call for 
the help of a better and mightier one; but 
the best and the mightiest is the one Spirit 
above all spirits. In His protection, what 
can harm you? Popular belief agrees in 
this that evil spirits will vanish when the 
name of God is called upon. 

There is, however, in this matter great 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 105 

danger of belief degenerating into super- 
stition. The simplest means, after all, of 
keeping ghosts away is, not to believe in 
their coming. For believing that they may 
come is going half-way to meet them. 

" Spirits see each other," I said just now. 
I argue that such appearance, which is con- 
trary to the order of things at present, is 
only anticipated from the order of things to 
come. Clearly, distinctly, objectively, the 
inhabitants of the hereafter will see each 
other, in the same shape of which we in this 
life preserve but a faint likeness, a dim con- 
tour, in our memory. For they interpene- 
trate each other with their whole nature, of 
which a small portion only enters our minds 
when we remember them. In order to at- 
tract them, it will be necessary to direct one's 
attention towards them, in after-life as well 
as at present. 

Now you may ask, How is it possible for 
those that interpenetrate each other to ap- 
pear to each other objectively, in a distinct 
shape? You may as well ask, How is it 
possible that that something which, in your 



106 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

brain, produces the idea of a living person, 
or the memory of a dead person (and this is 
all you have to base it upon), appears to 
you as an outward object, a definite recol- 
lection. The effects that produce your rec- 
ollection have no distinct shape themselves, 
yet they bring before you the distinct out- 
lines of the person from whom they orig- 
inally proceeded. You cannot tell why it 
is so, in this life; how can you expect to 
know more of the hereafter? 

Thus, I say again, do not draw inferences 
from supposed present causes unknown to 
you, nor from premises of your own inven- 
tion; but from present facts known to you 
and all, to arrive at the greater and higher 
facts of the hereafter. Any single infer- 
ence may be erroneous, so you must not 
stick to all the particulars; but the accord- 
ance of all the different inferences, pointing 
towards that which is before and above all 
inference, will be the best support for our 
belief from below, and the best guide to the 
regions above. But if, from the beginning, 
you would take your footing above, the 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 107 

whole path of belief which is to lead you 
upward might slip from under your feet. 



CHAPTER XL 

THERE would be no more difficulties 
for our belief, could we only make 
up our minds to take the word that 
has been a fine saying for more than a thou- 
sand years, that " in God we live, and move, 
and have our being/' for more than a word, 
or rhetorical phrase. In that case our be- 
lief in God and in our own eternal life would 
be one; we should then look upon our own 
life as part of God's eternal life, and should 
consider the height of our future life above 
this present life as a higher step within God, 
from that lower step where we are placed 
in Him now ; a better insight into the things 
below would enable us better to comprehend 
higher things, and from their mutual con- 
nection we should comprehend the great 
whole of which we only form a part. 
When your perceptions are gone out of 



ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 1 09 

your consciousness, recollections will rise out 
of them. Thus your whole earthly life of 
perceptions in God will be gone one day, 
but a higher life of recollections in God will 
have risen out of it; and as your recollec- 
tions move and associate within your head, 
the spirits of the hereafter move and asso- 
ciate within the Divine head. It is only one 
step higher on the same ladder, which does 
not lead to God, but higher up in God, who 
holds within Himself top and bottom of that 
ladder. How empty must God appear to 
those who take the above-mentioned text 
for an empty sound ; how full is God through 
the full significance of those words! 

Do you pretend to know how, in your 
present stage, a life of perceptions is pos- 
sible in your mind ? You know nothing but 
that there is such a life, which, being a 
spiritual life, is only possible in a spirit. 
So there can be no difficulty for you to be- 
lieve — although you know not how it is 
possible — that there will be a life hereaf- 
ter, of your whole spirit in a higher spirit; 



IIO ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

if you only believe that there is a higher 
Spirit, and yourself in Him.. 

And again, there would be no more diffi- 
culties for our belief, if we could make up 
our minds to take for true that other word, 
that in everything God liveth, and moveth, 
and hath His being. Then there would be 
no dead world for us, but a living world, 
out of which every human being builds up 
his own future body, as a new house built 
up within the house of God. 

When, oh when will that life-giving faith 
become alive among us? The fact that it is 
a life-giving faith shall make it alive. 



CHAPTER XII. 

YOUR question was, whether it would 
be; my answer is how it will be. 
Faith renders your question as to 
the Whether unnecessary; but if the ques- 
tion is asked, there is that one answer as 
to the How. And as long as that How has 
not been settled, the Whether will not cease 
to come and go. 

Here is the tree; let one or the other of 
its leaves drop away, if only its root be 
struck deeply and firmly in the ground : new 
branches and new leaves will grow and drop 
away again, but the tree will stand and 
bring forth blossoms of beauty, and instead 
of taking its root in faith, bear fruits of 
faith. 



APPENDIX I. 

ON THE PRINCIPLE OF HEAVENLY VISION. 

VISION may be produced on several 
principles. If an opaque screen 
were placed in front of the retina 
with only a tiny opening in it, we could see 
through that opening, as every luminous 
point of the outer world would send a slen- 
der ray of light through it, and the rays 
crossing in the opening would produce an 
image, inverted, on the retina. But such 
vision by means of slender rays would be 
rather dim ; that is not the way in which we 
see on earth. By another principle a trans- 
parent lens is placed in front of the retina 
which concentrates the whole cone of light 
emitted from every luminous point of the 
outer world, into a spot of the retina. This 



APPENDIX. 113 



makes vision much more distinct ; and this is 
the actual principle of earthly vision, or rath- 
er of the external process of it; it does not 
explain the real act of seeing. For the soul 
does not see immediately the points of the 
image on the retina ; vision, as a mental act, 
is produced by the vibrations propagated 
into the brain, the different vibrations pro- 
ceeding from one point being felt in one: 
whatever proceeds from a common source 
is perceived as one in the soul, though we 
cannot tell how a complex process in space 
is condensed into a simple perception in the 
mind. It is, after all, natural enough for 
one and the same thing to afford a different 
appearance when seen from different points 
of view — an inner or an outer one — and 
it is a general experience concerning the con- 
nection between body and soul that a simple 
psychic act is based on a physical complex, 
or, that the physically complicated is psych- 
ically concentrated into something simple 
and one in itself. Vision may be explained 
through this law, and could hardly be ex- 



1 14 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

plained differently, from the impossibility of 
proving a simple seat of the soul. 

Now, a third principle of vision may be 
conceived, viz., the principle of interpene- 
tration of the psycho-physical emanations 
(i. e. physical processes producing psychical 
effects) of two opposite points, the percep- 
tion of either point being produced in the 
other immediately, by uniting those various 
emanations in one. And what holds good 
for two separate points, would do for two 
separate systems of points. This would be 
the most perfect vision, the points of the ob- 
jects appearing to each other immediately 
and in their full intensity, in proportion 
with the power produced by the interpene- 
trating emanations, whereas in our earthly 
vision it is not the points of the objects that 
are seen, only their images on the retina. 

I imagine that there could be a mode of 
vision on this principle. The emanations 
of celestial bodies, meeting each other in 
space, do indeed correspond to it, supposing 
that luminary vibrations, or concomitant vi- 
brations of a higher order, may be consid- 



APPENDIX. 115 



ered as psycho-physical movements (which 
supposition is nowise contrary to experi- 
ence). There has indeed always been an 
inclination to connect our own mental life 
with movements of imponderable substance ; 
nor can there be anything to prevent our 
connecting such movements in the outer 
world with a mental life of a higher order. 
Even our human eye would not exactly re- 
quire a lens in front of the retina to receive 
point-shaped impressions from outward 
points, if the retina itself, and each succes- 
sive stratum of it, which now intercept out- 
ward emanations on their way to our psy- 
cho-physical system, should offer a surface 
of sensitive points to receive, and meet with 
their own emanations, directly and without 
any check or hindrance, the impression of 
the outward vibrations : as in the case of 
the luminary emanations of stars. 

What, then, is the use of earthly eyes? 
It is this that in their connection with our 
other senses, they help to form organs for 
effects of a higher order, organs which we 
call Men, who in their turn are connected, 



Il6 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

and united into an organism of a higher or- 
der than man, which we call Earth! 

New vibrations go forth, no doubt, from 
the central points in which the fibres of the 
optic nerve terminate in the brain, vibra- 
tions propagated through the fibres between 
those points, and producing, where they 
meet, through the total of impressions 
caused by the single points, the perceptions 
of real objects: in the same way we may 
assume the perceptions of all the heavenly 
beings to be embraced in a higher Divine 
perception. 

Two naked men are evidently under the 
same outward conditions, reciprocally, as 
two stars ; however, they do not see each 
other with their skins; for the psycho-phy- 
sical system of man is inside him, closed 
up behind his skin, whereas that of the 
Earth is spread out over its surface, having 
its ultimate ramifications in the human be- 
ings that live on that surface. Now, there 
is one place in the skin affording an entrance 
to our psycho-physical system, namely, the 
eye, whereby men do indeed see each other. 



APPEXDIX. 117 



The rest of the emanations which they in- 
terchange, spread beyond them into the 
greater psycho-physical system, without af- 
fecting their own respective consciousness. 
I do not say that every point in this the- 
ory is well established, but I hope I have 
given a right idea of a right principle. It 
is no demonstration, it is only a remark, 
which I hope will prove the germ, still half- 
buried in darkness,, to a great luminous 
world-conception. My speculations, as laid 
down in this last and in the foregoing chap- 
ters, will become better established on larger 
and firmer grounds, and will be more gen- 
erally adopted, when the science of psycho- 
physics, now only in its infancy, shall see 
its object not in an isolated theory of the 
relations between body and mind in the par- 
ticular human and animal organisms, but in 
a universal theory of the relations between 
the mental and the material principles of the 
universe. Such a time, of which this pur- 
ports to be a harbinger, shall come. To the 
materialist and the idealist my views must 
at present appear foolishness, just as the 



1 1 8 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

materialism and idealism of our days will 
one day appear foolishness in their turn. 



APPENDIX II. 

THE following passages contained in 
the first Edition in the places here re- 
ferred to, were suppressed by the 
Author in the later editions. 

(Page jo, after line 14.) It ought, how- 
ever, to be remembered that though in the 
third stage the spirit of man may rise 
towards God, the third stage is not the high- 
est attainable. In that stage the spirit of 
man, having passed through this life, will 
more fully comprehend the working of God 
in the life of the earth. However, God 
manifests himself in still higher stages of 
life, which we are in the habit of vaguely 
describing as the heavens. To them man 
aspires during the third stage, preparing 
himself to live there in a succeeding stage. 
Nothing in the life of the earth will be con- 
cealed from man while in the third stage. 



120 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

The greatest spirits of that stage will by 
God's appointment be governors of the 
earth. But into that higher life, beyond the 
earth, man will have to be born through a 
second death. 

(Page 82, line 19.) This earth of ours, 
of which mankind forms a part, is to the 
spirits of the third stage a common body, 
and all the processes of nature are to them 
what the processes of our own body are to 
us. Their body encloses the bodies of the 
second stage, as the bodies of the second 
stage enclose those of the first. Each lower 
sphere of life is enclosed in a higher sphere, 
into which it is one day to open. The one 
grows in and through the other, by means, 
as it were, of nerves connecting the two. 
But there is no connection of consciousness 
between the two. No sphere of life is clear- 
ly aware of the greater sphere which en- 
closes it, and which it is one day to occupy. 
Thus man in his present stage is like the 
seed growing and developing itself as part 
of the plant, without knowing about the 
light-life of the plant, which shall one day 



APPENDIX. 121 



be its own life, when in death it has left its 
mother-plant. 

(Page 85, line 20, after the colon.) The 
earth, the body of the spirits of the third 
stage, is self-contained, but connected with 
a greater body, the Sun, by the emanating 
light and the general gravitation — as the 
child is connected with its mother's body by 
the navel-string, receiving through it its im- 
pulses of life. And as the embryo, while 
connected with its mother, goes on growing 
and unfolding itself, till in its first birth it 
passes into the mother's own sphere of life, 
and as man, after his birth, while connected 
with the earth, goes on growing and unfold- 
ing himself, till in death he shall pass into 
the earth's own sphere of life, so the spirits 
of the third stage, being connected with the 
sun, will go on unfolding themselves, till on 
the fourth stage they shall pass into the 
sun's life. In this way man, having gone 
through his round of the three stages of 
earth-life, is to begin a new round in a 
higher world — another celestial body — so 
that the highest stage of his earth-life is like 



122 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

an embryo-state for the lowest stage of that 
higher-world life. And so the earth may be 
compared to an tgg, from which the sun 
breeds spirits, that they may rise to the sun 
on wings of light. 

In their stage of sun-life the spirits, by 
means of light and gravitation, will see and 
feel through space, and commune with plan- 
ets and suns, as far as light and gravitation 
reach. Their common light-sense will en- 
able the sun's inhabitants to survey at a 
glance the varieties of life and motion in all 
the planets as clearly as we now survey our 
nearest surroundings; and so, though born 
on one individual planet out of the many, 
we shall know them all without having to 
pass a lifetime on each of them. The spirits 
who, while living on several planets, re- 
mained strangers to each other, will meet on 
the sun, in the same sphere of life, whence 
each of them may look back upon the scene 
of his own former life as well as on the 
scenes of evolution of all the rest. And in 
a succeeding stage the spirits of the indi- 
vidual sun will be born into the vast ocean 



APPENDIX. 123 



of suns, which knows of no bounds but 
boundlessness. And in a still higher stage 
they will reach the eternal source of space 
and time, itself independent of space and 
time — and finally even they will outgrow 
all space and time, being received into God's 
everlasting glory. 

Chapter IX (conclusion). Therefore be 
ye of good courage in your outlook beyond 
the grave; do not heed the sayings of ig- 
norance, proclaiming that in death, when 
man's body is given back to the dust of the 
earth, his spirit shall lose itself in the abso- 
lute. Of a truth, man shall return to the 
absolute, though not after his first death, 
but after his last, and not like the raindrop 
that is swallowed up in the ocean from 
which it originally came, but like the butter- 
fly that leaves its caterpillar's skin behind, 
to move about freely and joyfully in its pure 
parental element. The last death of man, 
or of any spirit, is indeed an addition, of a 
new individual and independent element 
evolved in and through its various stages of 
life, to the great Principle of all existence, 



124 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

undetermined in the beginning of creation, 
but destined to be determined and evolved by 
this very addition. The absolute is not a 
grave-yard for decaying corpses ; it is the 
birth-place of the children of God that have 
grown into angels, who are as eyes and ears 
and hands to God, whereby he governs all 
the lower spheres, down to this present 
world of ours. 



AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT TO FIRST 
EDITION. 

THE idea worked out in this little book, 
that the spirits of the dead continue 
to exist as individuals in the living, 
was first suggested to me through a conver- 
sation with my friend Professor Billroth, 1 
then living in Leipzig, now in Halle. The 
idea appealing to a series of kindred thoughts 
lying ready in my own mind, and engender- 
ing new ones, finally assumed the present 
shape, enlarged by a kind of spontaneous 

1 Johann Gustav Friedrich Billroth, born 1808 at 
Lubeck, died 1836 at Halle, where in 1834 ne na d 
been appointed professor of theology. He must not 
be confused with Theodore Billroth, the famous 
anatomist. Prof. Billroth's chief work, here alluded 
to (but, as it seems, undeservedly neglected in our 
days), was published after his death by Prof. Erd- 
mann, of Halle: Vorlesungen ilber Religionsphiloso- 
phie: Leipzig, 1837. 



126 ON LIFE AFTER DEATH. 

evolution into the idea of a higher life of 
spirits in God. In the meantime the orig- 
inator's own way of thinking has taken a 
different direction from ours, in the philos- 
ophy of religion in general, and especially 
in the doctrine of immortality, so that he 
seems for the most part, if not entirely, to 
have abandoned the fundamental idea. 
Nevertheless, I have felt obliged to mention 
him as its originator, though I may no longer 
speak of him as its advocate. As far as I 
know he will expound his own views on the 
subject in a philosophical work shortly to 
appear. 

Written at Gastein, 

August, 1835. 



INDEX. 



Absolute not a grave-yard, 124. 
^Esthetics, Introduction to, 10. 
After-life, Description of, 41-43. 
Angels, Anatomy of, 12; Belief in, 17. 
Apparitions, 103. 
Art, Germ for a new phase of, 64. 

B 

Billroth, J. G. R, 125. 

Birth, 31. 

Blessed or unblessed existence, 20. 

Blessed the man, 62. 

Body, Celestial, 121. 

Body-spirit, Infant has, 34. 

Bodies of the three stages, 87. 

Brain, a world of emotions, 93 ; and lute, 73 ; Mental 

acts accompanied by vibrations of, 73; Without 

brain after death, 92. 
Biichner, F. K. C. L., 7. 
Butterfly, Man like a, 123. 

C 

Caterpillar, Man like a, 123. 
Celestial body, 121. 

127 



128 INDEX. 



Child alive a moment cannot die, 75. 

Christ, Church of, 23; in the Lord's Supper, 65; 
Christ liveth, 39; son of God, 22; the mediator, 
18; to be worshiped with God, 71; United in, 
24; United with, in the hereafter, 67. 

Christ's body, the Church, 40; life not supernat- 
ural, 22f. 

Christianity, 21. 

Church, The, Christ's body, 40; of Christ, 23. 

Churches and scoffers, 64. 

Circle of influences, 75. 

Circles, Intersecting wave, 89 ; of waves, 37! 

Clairvoyance, 47, 101. 

Color-star, 46. 

Commandments of God, 24. 

Communion of Spirits, 79, 80. 

Conscious energy, 94; Conscious in death, 75. 

Consciousness, Continuation of, 20; not reabsorbed 
in universal, 98 ; set free by death, 59 ; Threshold 
of, 90, 99; Transition of, 20; Union of, en- 
hanced by death, 66; Universal, 97; wanders, 
99, 100. 

Continuation of life, 96. 



Darwin, Charles, 25. 

Dead geniuses and saints, mediators, 70. 

Dead, The, and living, Meeting of, 58; how they 
arise, 63; Image of, in memory, 102; in your 
mind, 61; Influence of, 53; made happy or 
miserable, 62; Real manifestations of the, 103; 
Shrine for great, 70 ; Spirits of the, 37 ; Thoughts 



INDEX. 129 

of the, not gone, 37; within us, 60; Worship of 
the, 70. 

Death, 31 ; a climacteric disease, 42; a new day, 76; 
a second birth, 32 ; After death, liberty, 81 ; 
Conscious in, 75; Consciousness set free by, 59; 
enhancing union of consciousness, 66; First and 
last, 123; In the moment of, 36; Man will learn 
after, 85. 

Desert island, Man on, 74. 

Divine germ in the third stage, 30 ; Divine life, 91 ; 
Divine perception, 116; Divine spirit all-con- 
scious, 17. 

E 

Earth; a common body, 120; an embryo-state, 122; 

an enormous eye, 84; an individuality, 16, 93; 

a system, 15; and mankind, 16; bound spirits, 

104; like an egg, 122; -spirit, 17ft*; the body of 

the spirits of the third stage, 121. 
Earthly eyes, Use of, 115. 
Earthly vision, 84, 1 13. 
Egg, Earth like an, 122. 
Embryo-state, The Earth an, 122. 
Eucharist, Christ in the, 65. 
Evolution, 26. 

Eye; an entrance, 116; Earth an enormous, 84. 
Eyes, Use of earthly, 115. 

F 

Fechner, Gustav Theodor ; Dates of Birth and Death, 
8; on spritism, 29; Pseudonym of, 11 ; Works: 
Elements of Psychophysics, 9; Introduction to 



130 INDEX, 



Esthetics, 10 ; Four Paradoxes, n ; Anatomy of 
Angels, 12; Stapelia Mixta, 125 Zend Avesta, 
I3> I5» 21, 26; Summum Bonum, 13; Nanna or 
the Soul-Life of Plants, 14; Professor Schleiden 
and the Moon, 25; On the Soul Question, 25; 
The Three Motives and Arguments of Belief, 
25; Some Ideas on the Creation and Evolution 
of Organisms, 26; The Daylight-View versus the 
Night- View, 26. 

Fechner's Law, 7. 

Fellowship with great spirits, 67. 

Future life one of reminiscences, 18. 



Ghosts, 103. 

God, Belief in, 2iff; Christ to be worshiped with, 
71 ; In Him we live, 108 ; lives in everything, 
no; Our life part of God's life, 108. 

God's Commandments, 24; ubiquity, 91. 

Goethe, J. W. v., 38, 39. 

Good, Increasing power of, 43. 

Grave, Outlook beyond the, 123. 

Grave-yard, Absolute not a, 124. 

H 

Hallucinations, 103. 
Heaven, Hopes of, 83. 
Heavenly things, 15. 
Hell, 41, 52. 
Herbart, J. F., 10. 

Hereafter; How to arrive at facts of, 106; Justice 
in the, 24; Senses too narrow for, 78; Spirits of 



INDEX. 131 



the, 109; Spirits united in the, 69; United in 
the, 66; United with Christ in the, 67. 



Illumination, State of, 77. 
Infant has body-spirit, 34. 
Interpenetration, 114; of spirits, 105. 
Intersecting wave circles, 89. 
Isolated man, Mind of an, 75. 

J 

Justice, 63 ; in the hereafter, 24 ; of the universe, 41. 

L 

Larger body, Our, 101. 

Life, part of God's life, 108. 

Light-sense, 122. 

Living and dead, Meeting of, 58. 

Longing gratified, 84. 

Lute and brain, 73. 

Luther, M., 39. 

M 

Means and ends, 45. 

Mediator, Christ a, 70. 

Mediators, Dead geniuses and saints are, 70. 

Mental acts accompanied by vibrations of the 

brain, 73. 
Mind of man, 46. 

Mises, Dr. (Pseudonym of Fechner), 11, 12, 13. 
Moleschott, Jacob, 7. 
Mother looking for child, 60. 



132 INDEX. 

N 

Name to be kept unsullied, 63. 
Nanna, or the Soul-Life of Plants, 14. 
Napoleon, 38, 39. 

O 
Od, 27. 

P 

Paradoxes, Four, Footnote, 11. 

Perceptions; Present Life one of, 18; and remi- 
niscences, 19. 
Phantasms, 103. 
Placenta, Footnote, 35. 
Plants, The Soul-Life of, 14. 
Present life one of perceptions, 18. 
Present stage like a seed, 120. 
Presentiments, 101. 
Psychophysics, 117; Elements of, 9. 
Psychophysical emanations, 114. 
Punishment and Reward, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62. 



Reichenbach, Baron, 27. 

Reminiscences; Future Life one of, 18; and percep- 
tions, 19. 
Resurrection of man, 23. 
Reward and punishment, 24, 25, 41, 43, 62. 

S 

Scheibner, 27. 
Schiller, F. v., 39- 
Schleiden, M. J., 25. 



INDEX. 133 

Scoffers and churches, 64. 

Seed, Present stage like a, 120. 

Self unimpaired, Man's, 78. 

Sense organs dispensed with, 82. 

Senses; too narrow for hereafter, 78; Windows 
of, 81. 

Shrine for great dead, 70. 

Sight, A new kind of, 84. 

Slade, Henry, 27. 

Sleep and Waking, 95. 

Soul, Symbol of the, 47. 

Spheres intersect, 88. 

Spirit tried here, 44. 

Spirits ; cannot conceal their thoughts, 79 ; Close Fel- 
lowship with the great, 67; Communion of, 79, 
80 ; continue as individuals, 125 ; engender 
thoughts within us, 48; entering into us, 47; 
Harmony of, 55 ; Higher, 55 ; Immediate inter- 
course of, 32; in God, 126; Kindred, 51, 54; 
of the hereafter, 109; of the third stage, 87; see 
each other, 105; Strife between, 49, 50, 55; 
try to make use of us, 48; united in the here- 
after, 69. 

Spiritism, 27, 28; Fechner on, 29. 

Spiritual; body, 36; movements, 55; world like a 
tree, 69. 

Stages of life. See s. v. Three stages of life. 

Stapelia Mixta, 12. 

Stork to carry babies, No, 83. 

Strife between spirits, 49, 50, 55. 

Summum Bonum, 13. 

Superstition, Danger of, 105. 



134 INDEX. 



Symbol of the soul, 47. 

T 

Telepathy (not mentioned, but probably implied), 
32, 59, 79- 

Thoughts of the dead not gone, 37. 

Three Stages of Life, 3of, 35f, 121 ; Bodies of, 87 ; 
First Stage, 31 ; Second (present) stage, like a 
seed, 120; Third Stage, 54, 119; Spirits of, 87, 121. 

Threshold of consciousness, 90, 99. 

Tree of spirits, 69. 

U 

Union of consciousness enhanced by death, 66. 
United in the hereafter, 66. 
Universe, alive, 14. 

V 

Vibrations, Footnote, 74; of brain, Mental acts ac- 
companied by, 7^. 
Vision, 112, 113, 114. 

W 

Wadsworth, Maria C, 7. 
Waking and sleep, 95. 
Weber, W., 27. 
Woe to the man, 62. 
Wren on eagle's back, 91. 
Wundt, Wilhelm, 10, 27. 



Zend-Avesta, 13, 15, 21, 26. 
Zollner, Professor, 27. 



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